Well, I'm no bacteriologist. But I think I see little globes of nastiness growing on the petri dish that we labeled "mouth". This was the cotton swab wiped inside my son's mouth and then onto the petri dish. I used a butter knife to scrape off a hunk from the petri dish and put it on a slide with a slide cover, being very careful not to touch it. Truth is, you're not supposed to take the covers off of them after they've grown, but I couldn't get the entire dish to set on the stage of my microscope. So I stuck my neck out for science, but you better believe I had plenty of antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer close by. The kids were NOT doing this part. I then covered our specimen with plastic slide covers and set the microscope's magnification to 1200x .
Honestly, I don't have the energy to go through ALL of our 12 samples and compare them, so I'm not being very scientific here. But the goal was achieved: we grew and observed nasty bacteria, right in our own school. ICKY. Into the trash they go! Soap and water for EVERYONE!
I was actually pretty impressed with my little microscope on this experiment. It's been a great tool to have in our school room.
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