Blog Assignment #3: Mystery Microbes
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| My Petri Dish: Day 3 |
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| My Petri Dish: Day 7 |
The four objects I chose to swab for my mystery microbes petri dish were microscope #9's focus knob (pictured upper left), the bottom of my shoe (upper right), my cell phone screen (bottom left), and a blue dry erase marker from lab (bottom right). On day 3 the only growth I observed was on the portion of the petri dish where I swabbed the bottom of my shoe. It didn't look like much, just kind of a foggy fuzzy brown over the area where the sample was spread. All the other samples on the petri dish looked the same, I couldn't see any growth. On day 7 I observed much more growth, again mainly on the bottom of shoe portion of the petri dish, and a little growth on from my cell phone screen and the microscope #9 focus knob. The bottom of my shoe sample had many different looking growths. There was fuzzy white growth, a kind of shiny, liquid-y-looking beige growth, brown-spotted growth, and a couple spots of red growth that were really tiny. There was so much growth i think it spread into the other areas of samples on the petri dish. From the microscope #9 sample i observed 4 small circular yellow growth, and one of the same nature from my cell phone screen sample. I observed no growth on the blue dry erase marker portion of the petri dish.
I didn't observe growth from all the samples and I think a reason for this could be that we learned only 1% of bacteria samples will grow successfully in a lab environment. The sample with the most growth (bottom of my shoe) had a lot more surface area to be swabbed than the sample with no growth on it (the dry erase marker). When I sampled the bottom of my shoe there was dirt and other debris from outside on it, and dry erase marker was just in lab and since most people wash their hands quite often (I hope!) it could have just had less microbes for potential growth on it in the first place. the most surprising thing about the growth in my petri dish was the amount of it! I was expecting the most growth from the bottom of my shoe, but seeing it was a different story, it's intriguing in a gross way.
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| Karina's Petri Dish: Day 7 |
I compared my samples to my lab mate Karina's samples. It was interesting to compare her samples to mine because we both did the bottom of our shoes and there was a lot of growth! On Karina's samples it's hard to tell how much of the growth in the dish came from her shoe sample. It looks like the same mixture of bacteria overall which makes me think that most of it belongs to that sample, and the growth just spread over the other samples but I don't know how to tell for sure. Either way, both of our shoes seem to have a lot of mystery microbes. One similarity between our samples that I noticed was that there seemed to be the same types of fuzzy white and tiny spots of red growths, maybe we picked up those microbes on our shoes from around campus or maybe they're just very common types. Also on Karina's under phone sample the yellow circular growths look very much like the growths that were on my cell phone screen.
REFLECTION:
This mini experiment really made me think about how even though you can't see them usually, microorganisms really are everywhere and even if you know that you can still be very surprised by the magnitude at which they exist. I think more often now I'll be wondering what types of microorganisms I'm picking up throughout my days because this experiment made it seem more real. I'm going to be washing my hands even more than I already do. Also this made me think about in crime TV shows where in the lab they're always looking at stuff like this and are able to identify where a person has been by specific microorganisms (among other things) found on them. While I don't think it's very accurate to how those types of investigations go in real life and I think they would be much more difficult, it seems even more unlikely to me now because of how many microorganisms are present on everything.
QUESTIONS:
1. Since on day 3 I didn't observe any growth from some of the samples, I'm wondering how does the speed of growth differ for different microorganisms?
2. If only 1% of the microorganisms are actually successfully grown in lab environments, why did these certain types grow from my samples?
3. Could we identify if any of the microorganisms grown from our samples are harmful to us?
HYPOTHESIS:
The microorganisms that took more time to show growth were less present in the samples than the ones that grew more quickly.
In my sample of the lab's door handle I also saw little specks of red microbe growth. I did not see anywhere near as much growth in my samples as you saw in just your shoe sample. Looking at some of the other posts, it would appear it's common to see a lot of microbe growth on moist surfaces. Since our shoes come in contact with a vast number of different surfaces and have a readily available source of water to them from walkways (as it rains all the time) it would make sense that our shoes host ideal conditions for microbes.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that the microorganisms from your cell phone and shoe are very similar to those that grew from the cell phone and the aquarium samples I collected. The yellow round organism from your cell phone is also one I found in common with Michelle's plate that I used for my comparison. It's interesting that our cell phone must provide similar conditions for similar organisms to grow on it even though they belong to different people.
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