Lab was the pick-me-up I had hoped for. The lab manager accidentally made the Pseudomonas stock broth way too concentrated, so our plates came back covered in the stuff. They looked like giant, corroded pennies. The pigment was definitely neat. I took a whiff (and even convinced some lab mates to do the same), and while the odor [...]
I was busy figuring out weird ways to make a cheap, safe manual centrifuge. The awesome wife said, “We have one of those, it’s called a salad spinner.” I’m a lucky guy!
Update: This will be for separating, say, milk curds, not making pellets of Vibrio cholerae, so don’t worry, it’s still safe to eat [...]
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I’ll make a bigger post when I actually have it and comment on the quality.
Remember the lab practical I was worried about? I still think I should practice the areas I pointed out, but we got our grades back, and I did very well. So, that’s one less thing to worry about.
We did streak plates earlier this week and I had a blast.
I’d been looking forward to doing a streak plate since before I even fully decided to take a class. Streaking is really basic and easy, but it elegantly solves one of the earliest problems in microbiology, “How do you isolate bacteria from the hodge [...]
Prof graded them all in one night.
102 out of 100. I’m pretty jazzed. The class average was such that I feel like this was an actual accomplishment and not just an easy test.
The 2 points were extra credit. ”Name any prokaryote by giving its genus and specific epithet.”
I wrote Vibrio cholerae, naturally.
I just finished the practice test, aced it. Feeling rather confident. Knowing how to study and wanting to learn rather than pass makes all the difference. Still, wish me luck.
It’s almost funny how bouncy and grinny I get after lab. In my vast experience of two weeks, I think I really like bench work. There’s something appealing about setting up your equipment and materials in a sort of geeky mise en place and methodically going through the work.
Fixed some smears from the bugs we started growing during the last lab. All the cultures showed growth, so I guess I did wait long enough for the loop to cool off. Phew.
I finally got to use a stain(methyl blue). I know it’s a little thing, but imagine spending more than a year reading about [...]
The day job is still in crunch mode, but I got into the lab to check out the bugs I started last week.
Aside from a sad lack of pigmented colonies, it was very cool. My dish sponge sample was just totally overgrown. Lots of tiny irregular colonies everywhere. Two very small but yellow, raised, shiny [...]
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