A Day at the Lab

As I eluded to in an earlier post I'm a grad student. I work in molecular biology lab that focuses on plant research (I tell my grandparent's I'm a farmer). Since this is were I spend upwards of 16 hours a day often 7 days a week I suspect I'll be making many lab-based posts in the future. I'm worried my lack of life outside the lab will quickly turn this blog into boredom central but there are some pretty cool things that come up every day so I'll share with you today's puzzle.

I grew some cucumbers for an experiment and the roots behaved really weird. Check it out:

All those white lines are the roots (I removed the pot for the photo). They all grew around the outside edge of the soil instead of throughout the soil.

When I cut open the soil mass it's just the tiniest root hairs throughout the interior:

The roots normally grow throughout the soil (just like any old plant you'd get a garden center) so what's up with these plants? Soil too tightly compacted (so the roots couldn't penetrate)? Too much water (so they were trying to find the higher oxygen at the edges of the pot)?