Five (5) techniques or practices I observed:
1) Name two trash object from your bag and think of ways you could reduce your use of them.
I honestly thought that I would have gotten more trash. Most of what was in my bag was just laying in my room so it was trash probably within the last month. I also became really aware of how much paper I've been just throwing away when I could have been recycling them. 3) What challenges do we face, as a city, to extend the life of our landfills? I believe that it is a challenge for us to recycle because we aren't aware of what CAN or CAN'T be recycled. Most people would only think of bottles and cans but it really doesn't end there. I also think it is difficult for us because trash cans are everywhere and they are convenient since everything can go in it. What: For this lab, we made gels with agarose in them. This lab was a technique use to figure out the size of DNA fragments. The technique is called electrophoresis. How: First, we had to make the gel for the lab. In order to do this, we had to get 70mL of dextrose and then add 0.84g of agarose into it. Then, we microwaved the solution until all of the agarose disappears. Next, we let the solution sit and cool down a little bit. Meanwhile, we prepared the gel casting tray by inserting the combs in specific areas. After that, we poured the solution into the gel containers and left them overnight for it to solidify. The next day, we made a flowchart on what to do afterwards because Jeff said that many people do this process wrong. Next, Jeff gave us a sample gel to pracice the lab on first. The sample gel was in a small petri dish and it had 8 wells (4 for each person). We were given a pipette, red dye, and water. Our first job was to fill the gel with water so all the wells are completely covered, then we used the pipette to draw the red dye and inserted the dye in each well. By doing this, we learned how to fill the well without missing the well or piercing into the gel. Those are the most common mistakes that are made. Once evryone has practiced, we moved on to the real thing. For the actual lab, we put the gel we made into the electrophoresis box. Once it was in the electrophoresis box, we were able to insert the dyes in the wells of the gels and fill the box with water so all the wells are covered. S1 has Bromophenol Blue which is a purple color and has 300 based pairs. S2 has Orange G and that gives us the DNA ladder. S3 Xylene Cyanol ff which is blue and has 4000 based pairs. When we were done putting the dyes in the wells, we covered the box with the cap then we plugged the electrophoresis box to a power source and waited for the magic to happen (gels moving). The box was plugged in for abpout 20 minutes. Then, we took the gels out to measure how far the dyes moved from the place we originally put it. Observations: When i saw our gel, I expected the gels to be moved further. I also noticed an extra dye spot, I think it is there because when I was putting it in the specific tank, I accidentally put some in the wrong tank. I also saw that Orange G produced three different colors of dyes and two of them are the same color as BB and XC. And where there are similar Orange G colors, they matched up in movement as the others. Data: Below is the data we recorded about the dyes. That includes how many based pairs the dyes have and how far they moved. Analysis: Below is the graph I made with the data we recorded. I believe that my orange g is not on the trendline because of how we measured the lengths that the dyes moved. We probably estimated to the nearest whole number. That effects the data because it isn't precise. If I were to redo this lab, I would be for precise with my measurements and not round to the nearest whole number.
Who/What: In this class, we are studying about bacteria and fungi. Because of that we have had labs that let us grow our own bacteria. In this lab, we will be able to grow some yeast. Before we got started on this lab, we first had to have a basic understanding of yeast and how they develop and colonize. Specifically for this lab, we made potato dextrose agar (PDA) and that is a type of growing medium for growing bacteria and fungi. How: For this lab, Jeff had a couple people peel some potatoes to make agar out of. To make the agar, I believe that Jeff heated up the potatoes with water (I'm not positive about this but that is what it looked like). Meanwhile everyone else continued on with the lab. We had to fill a pitcher with water then used a pipette to grab the amount of water we needed in each of our tubes. In each tube, there had to be 9.9 milliliters of water in each of them. We also labeled each tube with either 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 because that would be the amount of the raw yeast left in each tube after we are through the experiment. Then we took 0.1 milliliters out from the potato agar that Jeff made and we put it into the 0.2 labeled tube. Then we vortexed the 0.2 tube and then took out 0.1 milliliters out of there and put that into the 0.4 tube. We then took out 0.1 milliliters out of the 0.4 tube and moved it to the 0.6 tube. We didn't have enough class time that day so everything else was set aside for the next day. On the next day, Jeff had put potato dextrose agar gel into our two plates. Then we vortexed the 0.6 tube and removed 0.1 milliliters out of it and into one of the plates, we also took out 0.2 milliliters out of the 0.6 tube and put it into the other plate. we had to spread out the liquid in the plates then we put the plates into the incubator. We had to insert the plates upside down in the incubator so the water that would come out of it would affect the growing of the yeast. We left the plate in the incubator for about 24 hours and then we took it out to count how many colonies of yeast have grown. Unfortunately, water got in our plates which messed up the growth of the colonies. Observations: When we first opened the plates, the one thing that stood out the most was the smell of the yeast plate. The smell wasn't that pleasant. It smelt like bread dough, I realized that it probably smelt like that because yeast is in bread and that it was we are smelling. When I took a whiff of the yeast plate, sometimes it would smell like coconut milk too and the yogurt we made before. The yeast plate looked like what melted cheese looked like on pizza. Since we believe that to much moisture got into the plate, the turn out wasn't great because we weren't able to count the CFU since they weren't clear. It also looked really moist, we didn't touch it so we weren't able to test this theory. Data:
No data could be received with the results we had. Analysis: We believe that our colonies couldn't grow correctly because water got in to the plates which caused distortion for the colonies to grow. Also, the gel in the plates wasn't evenly spread out so that caused the streaking of the colonies. The reason we believe that extra condensation got into our plates was the placement of the plates in the incubator and also because other people opened the incubator while our yeast was growing. If we were to try it again, we would want our plates to be left in the incubator, undisturbed or maybe we will pick a better place for our plate to sit in the incubator. 1. What is a colony and an what does it represent? A colony is a group of fungi or bacteria that are grown from a spore or cell on a culture medium. In our lab, the colonies are represented by the groups of yeast that have grown on our plates. 2. What conditions for growth have we provided for the yeast? For our lab, we put the bacteria into the incubator which was at a certain hot temperature, these conditions are what allows the yeast to grow. 3. If we wanted to check the rate of growth for yeast, what would be a possible experimental design? (e.g. What should we do differently? How many samples should we take?) I believe that if we wanted check on the rate of the growth, we can count the colonies that grew in each hour. By doing that we can find out how many are multiplying by the hour. If taking the plate out each hour will affect the yeast too much than I think we should make multiple plates and take a different one out each hour to see the difference. This last design might not work because each plate might react differently. 1) Name and describe two ways fungi are able to obtain nutrients.
1. One thing you found surprising/interesting this week:
One thing I found surprising was that I stayed in the ABC game longer than I expected. I thought that I would mess up after about 2 letters. I think I managed to get to about 5 letters before I skipped a letter and messed up the game. 2. One thing you realize you need to work on I think I need to work on my skills for talking in front of a crowd. I usually get overwhelmed by the people staring at me and I try to block them out. But I get too focused in doing that that I forget what I originally was supposed to do. 3. List 3 things you are grateful for:
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December 2015
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