Christine plays the piano and flute and likes to sing. She also enjoys playing many different sports such as basketball, volleyball, and soccer. Christine's science hero is science teacher Traci Carter. "She encouraged me to persevere when I struggled," Christine says. A career in marine biology or rain forest ecology would be an ideal job for Christine's love of sea life and desire to preserve rain forests.
Christine had read about the challenges in maintaining the freshwater supply in Florida. She wondered if an alternative source could be used for lawn watering and other irrigation. After learning that her city's water plant produced brine as a by-product, she worked with advisers at the Florida Gulf Coast University summer research program to design her research. She chose to use paspalum grass because of its growing popularity in lawns and parks.
In her third series of annual experiments, Christine planted ten seashore paspalum grass plugs, watering five with tap water and five with reverse osmosis brine. She took soil samples after one, three, and five weeks, processing each for analysis by an atomic absorption spectrometer. After calibrating the spectrometer with standard iron and chromium solutions, she tested each soil sample. The amount of iron decreased 10% in the brine-watered samples, and the amount of chromium decreased 29%, leading Christine to conclude that the toxic metals do not collect in soil planted with seashore paspalum grass and watered with brine.
