POBR - Prairie Crane creek campground - Day 8

 People of The Big River

Location: Crane Prairie Creek Campgrounds

Day 8

Day eight was another science day, we did a lot more things with our water samples and the bacteria that we’ve been growing. But today breakfast we got some really good stuff; Monet had eggs, bacon, and potatoes on the menu. It was so delicious and such a treat to get warm breakfast. We took a bit longer to enjoy our meal before Dr. Black and Monet left to do everyone’s laundry, which we were all excited for since it’s been cold and a lot of our warmer clothes had gotten dirty the first couple of days. After they left, we began working with Dr. Schuster on getting more bacteria inoculated and he also had a few more test for us to do today. We began by grabbing our bio paddles from previous days to see if any new growth had come up. For my samples not a lot was going on except for the one from Swamp creek, so Kyal let me borrow one of his samples so that I could do all of the different tests with everyone else, which I was grateful for. Once we looked through everyone’s bio paddles, we moved on to see if the petri dishes had anything new. It was so interesting looking at all of them because you could see some the colonies, we isolated but also the streaks we made while putting them on there with the inoculation loop. It was really cool I think it made things feel more serious and technical at least for me anyways. Dr. Schuster also really emphasized on safety today since it was the next step of growing the bacteria and if handled incorrectly there was a chance that we might get sick. So, we were being mindful of that and changing our gloves out more frequently and making sure to not touch things excessively. After this we went through the sample dying process for our slides. First, we fixed a small sample of the isolated colonies on a slide by rubbing some of the growth on to the slide with a small drop of water. After that we went back and forth on top of an open but controlled flame so that the water would dry and we'd be left with something of a smudge of our bacteria. After that we began the gram stain process which requires three different stains, distilled water, and a decolorizing solution. First is your crystal violet that you let sit for a minute then rinse. Next more flooding this time with the mordant: Gram's iodine, letting it sit for a minute as well, and after that another rinse. Next is the decolorizing agent which is slowly dripped for 15 seconds. Finally, we flood the slide once more with safranin for 45 seconds and after another rinse. Once all of this is complete, we left it to airdry before we could look at it through the microscope under oil immersion. We also used a couple new tests so we can get a better and more concise idea of what kinds of bacteria were going to find. Those tests were the oxidase, Kovac Reagnt, and one more I can't quite remember the name of. After that we looked at our slides through the microscopes and we got to try and distinguish what their cell shape and arrangement is. After that we got some downtime and then dinner it was another really nice meal, we got personal pizzas, and they were so delicious. Another chilly yet eventful day. 

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