We spent the next 5 days counting rice grains – between the 3 of us we counted some 100000 grains. No wonder it took 5 full days!
We repeated some previously failed experiment on availaple phosphorus in the soil, however, it failed again and we had to ask for help from the head of the lab for what was going wrong.
He gave us a different method and I noted that It may have been a better idea to forgo the book procedure entirely and have asked the senior lab technician for their preferred method of analysis prior to undertaking the test.