Q. How do you make nutrient agar by using things you can find in a local grocery store. Example- Stater Bros. or Vons???
And also, when you make this, is it alright for dogs and humans to eat?
Were doing a project to find the bacteria in a dogs mouth
and in a human mouth. To see which has more. [5th grade science project]
Any ideas?
Were not actually going to bring the bacteria into the classroom. Were just bringing a couple of papers showing what we did and the conclusion.
And also, when you make this, is it alright for dogs and humans to eat?
Were doing a project to find the bacteria in a dogs mouth
and in a human mouth. To see which has more. [5th grade science project]
Any ideas?
Were not actually going to bring the bacteria into the classroom. Were just bringing a couple of papers showing what we did and the conclusion.
Answer
This is really not a project that requires a chicken little-esque response to. The sky isn't falling, and the world will not end. Your mouth is full of bacteria. So is your entire body. The bacteria outnumber your human cells by 10 to 1 at least. And for whatever it is worth, in college (not 5th graders, I know) we cultured bacteria from much more terrible places in our body than our mouth and it was BSL-1.
Answer to the question follows, at the end I'll recap biosafety levels.
You need a solidifying agent. Gelatine was used early on in microbiology to solidify agar. The problem with gelatine is that some bacteria degrade it, which is why agar is used now. But you should be able to try gelatine and see how it works.
The bacteria will need carbohydrates. You might want to try something like vegetable broth or maybe even V8? I know historically that these have been used as a component of growth media (one of the scientists in my lab makes some sort of V8 agar, he has cans of it on his bench).
Or you can try normal table sugar for this, since that's something the bacteria in a human's mouth encounter anyhow. Some bacteria cannot metabolize sucrose, however, just a detail to keep in mind.
The bacteria will also need some sort of protein in order to provide some amino acids and act as a nitrogen source. I'm not sure what to use for this, but something that dissolves and is high in protein.
To prepare it you'd want to mix everything together and then boil it until everything has dissolved. Let it cool a little then pour into whatever you're using as petri dish surrogates, making sure that they have a cover of some sort. If possible, you might want to work out some way to "sterilize" the petri dish-thing, use some rubbing alcohol perhaps prior to adding your agar.
I'm not sure about eating it. In theory you're just putting in stuff you would eat individually, so I don't know that it would necessarily be bad to eat. But, a "slick" way to do the experiment would be to use some sort of sterilized q-tip or something to swab the persons teeth, then streak it across the plate, and do the same with the dog.
Biosafety lesson @ http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/symp5/jyrtext.htm
"BSL-1 is appropriate for working with microorganisms that are not known to cause disease in healthy human humans. This is the type of laboratory found in municipal water-testing laboratories, in high schools, and in some community colleges teaching introductory microbiology classes, where the agents are not considered hazardous. "
I'm pretty sure if working with sewage is BSL-1, then so is growing bacteria from your own mouth.
This is really not a project that requires a chicken little-esque response to. The sky isn't falling, and the world will not end. Your mouth is full of bacteria. So is your entire body. The bacteria outnumber your human cells by 10 to 1 at least. And for whatever it is worth, in college (not 5th graders, I know) we cultured bacteria from much more terrible places in our body than our mouth and it was BSL-1.
Answer to the question follows, at the end I'll recap biosafety levels.
You need a solidifying agent. Gelatine was used early on in microbiology to solidify agar. The problem with gelatine is that some bacteria degrade it, which is why agar is used now. But you should be able to try gelatine and see how it works.
The bacteria will need carbohydrates. You might want to try something like vegetable broth or maybe even V8? I know historically that these have been used as a component of growth media (one of the scientists in my lab makes some sort of V8 agar, he has cans of it on his bench).
Or you can try normal table sugar for this, since that's something the bacteria in a human's mouth encounter anyhow. Some bacteria cannot metabolize sucrose, however, just a detail to keep in mind.
The bacteria will also need some sort of protein in order to provide some amino acids and act as a nitrogen source. I'm not sure what to use for this, but something that dissolves and is high in protein.
To prepare it you'd want to mix everything together and then boil it until everything has dissolved. Let it cool a little then pour into whatever you're using as petri dish surrogates, making sure that they have a cover of some sort. If possible, you might want to work out some way to "sterilize" the petri dish-thing, use some rubbing alcohol perhaps prior to adding your agar.
I'm not sure about eating it. In theory you're just putting in stuff you would eat individually, so I don't know that it would necessarily be bad to eat. But, a "slick" way to do the experiment would be to use some sort of sterilized q-tip or something to swab the persons teeth, then streak it across the plate, and do the same with the dog.
Biosafety lesson @ http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/symp5/jyrtext.htm
"BSL-1 is appropriate for working with microorganisms that are not known to cause disease in healthy human humans. This is the type of laboratory found in municipal water-testing laboratories, in high schools, and in some community colleges teaching introductory microbiology classes, where the agents are not considered hazardous. "
I'm pretty sure if working with sewage is BSL-1, then so is growing bacteria from your own mouth.
What would cause an electrical shock in my finger?
Zenny
I was cleaning off my kitchen counters with a nail brush and I had my left hand on the counter and after a few minutes I felt like electricity running through my ring finger and it scared me. It wasn't like a tiny little spark it felt like if I had stuck my hand in a light socket.
Answer
Hi Zenny. After your question about Christmas trees in Egypt closed, I posted a 140-character comment about it as a comment on one of your Yahoo photos because I'm staying in Cairo for a week or two and yesterday the guest house manager put up a Christmas tree with little electrical lights. We also hung up tinsel streamers and I contributed red and green balloons from my luggage. (When a clown goes on tour, the clown takes the circus with him!)
In New Zealand we usually use pine trees or pine branches (pinus radiata) but my sister is allergic to pine so at home we've used an artificial tree for some years. New Zealand has a tree, pohutukawa, which has dark red flowers around Christmas time, so it's called the New Zealand Christmas Tree although not many NZers actually take one indoors for Christmas.
Nineteen years ago I was in Zimbabwe at Christmas time. What I saw then was that whatever country people are in, if they want to celebrate something from their culture, they'll do it in ways that remind them of 'home'.
So, if people want the trappings of Christmas in Egypt, they'll get them. If they want to get the real meaning of Christmas--the good news that G.d was born as a human to identify with us in our situation and to show that we can live to serve G.d and others instead of ourselves--they can find that meaning wherever they are, too! Some believers have said to me that they like having Christmas away from New Zealand because back where we come from Christmas is mainly celebrated as a commercial event, not a spiritual occasion.
And for the many in Egypt who don't know or don't care what Christmas is about, they won't have trees and decorations. (Do you know the 1980s Live Aid song, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" ? To the majority of people that song was about, the meaning of Christmas hasn't been explained.)
Now, back to your electricity question. Maybe the bench is in contact with a live power line. That's not much of a problem as long as you don't complete the circuit by touching something else that lets the electricity flow through you. If it does, it can do damage. Getting an electric charge isn't bad in itself, birds perch on power lines without getting fried (or dry roasted)! (And static electricity can be harmless fun--see my blog on BumpANose.Org for a story about that.)
But as you say it happened 'after a few minutes' I suspect that it was some kind of cramp in a muscle in your finger. (If I wanted to freak you out, I could say, "Check that your fingers all work. Put your hand flat on a table and raise your fingers one by one. If you can't raise your ring finger, that's evidence that you've been abducted by aliens and experimented on in a laboratory in a space ship!" But, hey, I don't want to freak you out so I'll tell you now, humans' ring fingers never lift up off a flat surface the way their other fingers do.)
Last month I was in Pakistan with some other New Zealanders, visiting an NZer for her 50th birthday. Sue, one of the guests, was a bit of a clean-freak and her husband Tony was a bit of a hypochondriac. Sue decided to clean the grime of finger prints, etc, of the light switches. Next time Tony went into the bathroom and switched on the light, he yelled because he got an electric shock from it. Either Sue had left moisture in it, or she'd scrubbed off the insulation that was keeping people away from the electricity!
[Speaking of electricity, my laptop has just said the battery is down to 12% so I've plugged it in to the power supply. The power here isn't connected properly until I hear it sizzling in the power point! (It's hard to get laptops and cell phones plugged in enough to charge batteries in these third-world countries.)]
Well, I've written more than enough. I hope your question is still open for answers or I've been wasting my time!
Hi Zenny. After your question about Christmas trees in Egypt closed, I posted a 140-character comment about it as a comment on one of your Yahoo photos because I'm staying in Cairo for a week or two and yesterday the guest house manager put up a Christmas tree with little electrical lights. We also hung up tinsel streamers and I contributed red and green balloons from my luggage. (When a clown goes on tour, the clown takes the circus with him!)
In New Zealand we usually use pine trees or pine branches (pinus radiata) but my sister is allergic to pine so at home we've used an artificial tree for some years. New Zealand has a tree, pohutukawa, which has dark red flowers around Christmas time, so it's called the New Zealand Christmas Tree although not many NZers actually take one indoors for Christmas.
Nineteen years ago I was in Zimbabwe at Christmas time. What I saw then was that whatever country people are in, if they want to celebrate something from their culture, they'll do it in ways that remind them of 'home'.
So, if people want the trappings of Christmas in Egypt, they'll get them. If they want to get the real meaning of Christmas--the good news that G.d was born as a human to identify with us in our situation and to show that we can live to serve G.d and others instead of ourselves--they can find that meaning wherever they are, too! Some believers have said to me that they like having Christmas away from New Zealand because back where we come from Christmas is mainly celebrated as a commercial event, not a spiritual occasion.
And for the many in Egypt who don't know or don't care what Christmas is about, they won't have trees and decorations. (Do you know the 1980s Live Aid song, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" ? To the majority of people that song was about, the meaning of Christmas hasn't been explained.)
Now, back to your electricity question. Maybe the bench is in contact with a live power line. That's not much of a problem as long as you don't complete the circuit by touching something else that lets the electricity flow through you. If it does, it can do damage. Getting an electric charge isn't bad in itself, birds perch on power lines without getting fried (or dry roasted)! (And static electricity can be harmless fun--see my blog on BumpANose.Org for a story about that.)
But as you say it happened 'after a few minutes' I suspect that it was some kind of cramp in a muscle in your finger. (If I wanted to freak you out, I could say, "Check that your fingers all work. Put your hand flat on a table and raise your fingers one by one. If you can't raise your ring finger, that's evidence that you've been abducted by aliens and experimented on in a laboratory in a space ship!" But, hey, I don't want to freak you out so I'll tell you now, humans' ring fingers never lift up off a flat surface the way their other fingers do.)
Last month I was in Pakistan with some other New Zealanders, visiting an NZer for her 50th birthday. Sue, one of the guests, was a bit of a clean-freak and her husband Tony was a bit of a hypochondriac. Sue decided to clean the grime of finger prints, etc, of the light switches. Next time Tony went into the bathroom and switched on the light, he yelled because he got an electric shock from it. Either Sue had left moisture in it, or she'd scrubbed off the insulation that was keeping people away from the electricity!
[Speaking of electricity, my laptop has just said the battery is down to 12% so I've plugged it in to the power supply. The power here isn't connected properly until I hear it sizzling in the power point! (It's hard to get laptops and cell phones plugged in enough to charge batteries in these third-world countries.)]
Well, I've written more than enough. I hope your question is still open for answers or I've been wasting my time!
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Title Post: nutrient agar?
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Thanks For Coming To My Blog
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