Mythbusters - Double Dip

Earlier this week we put a nice bow on our diversity of life unit. We concluded by watching our favorite science show, Mythbusters. Seeing that we just finished our lesson over bacteria, we decided to watch an episode that dealt with a classic germiphobe myth.....the double dip.


In episode of Mythbusters, Adam and Jamie take on this myth (among others) by using very similar materials that we have used in our previous lessons. The task was to take agar petri dishes and swab them with samples from the two dips, cream based (sour cream) and liquid based (salsa). After the samples were collected, they then took samples after double dipping and a sample from spitting dip back into the bowl.

So is double dipping really as bad as putting your whole mouth in the bowl? After a long process Adam and Jamie came to the conclusion that there are far more germs already living in the dips themselves and that double dipping did not produce enough bacteria to make enough of a difference.

So naturally myself and my students decided to test this experiment ourselves. We set up a experiment in which we took samples of my mouth, chips, salsa, and of course my double dip. After letting our petri dishes sit for the weekend, here are our results.

Mouth - Despite the fact that I own the dirtiest water bottle in town, the sample from my mouth did not produce any sufficient colonies of bacteria.

Chip - The sample from the chip did produce several colonies, the most noticeable the one located at the top of the petri dish.

Salsa - As you can see, this dish produced the most bacteria colonies in our experiment, there are about ten colonies that can seen in this photo.

Double Dip - Finally the double dip produced the about the same about of colonies as the regular salsa did, proving that I did not transmit a sufficient amount of bacteria into the salsa.

Conclusion
Just the same as Adam and Jamie, my students and I called this one busted. As you can see from the pictures, a germiphobe should be more concerned about the salsa they are eating instead of the double dip.....so tell the germiphobe in your life to just relax.

Mr. McClung

Bacteria Conclusions

On Friday we wrapped up our bacteria investigation. For five days we allowed our bacteria samples to grow on our agar petri dishes that we created a week ago. Below are some pictures of the final results.

Let's start off with our lunch room, front office, and computer lab.
1. Water fountain
2. Key board from sixth grade computer lab
3. Phone from the office (student use)
4. Lunch room key pad (student use)

Next, revisit to the office and lunch room with stops in the sixth grade lab and restroom.
1. Front office phone (student use)
2. Computer mouse from sixth grade computer lab
3. Lunch room key pad (student use)
4. Toilet seat (girls restroom)

Lastly, school library, toilet seat, and our own door handle.
1. Toilet seat (boys restroom)
2. My classroom door handle
3. Library book marks
4. Library counter top

Overall we found that we live in a pretty disgusting world. There is no escaping germs and bacteria no matter where we go. Some students found bacteria in unlikely places, such as the library and bookmarks. There was also sampled locations that we expected lots of bacteria, but not to the extent we found, like our classroom pet the roaches. As we move forward we will be switching our focus from diversity of life to properties of matter as we come down the final stretch of the school year.

Mr. McClung

Peer Review Practice

Students this week have been preparing short stories using a specific outline method in order to build the appropriate parts of a story, rising action, climax, falling action, etc. So in order to prepare for our upcoming collaboration piece with Mr. Lamshed's class, we practiced our peer review skills today.

Practice
Students were asked to present their rough draft outlines for peer review to me. These outlines were taped to various places in the classroom (with no names) and students took two minutes at each paper to review a fellow classmate's work. Students were asked to review their ideas and provide 'constructive' comments to help make the paper stronger.

The Result
Awesome. My students really took off with this and took it very seriously. Everyone had a honest approach to help their friends write their papers. I really think this is a value exercise in teaching students how to proof read and review a paper and is an exercise I look forward to doing again in the future.

Mr. McClung

Holocaust ID Cards

Inspired by my visit to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum back in December, I decided to assign my students an assignments using the identification cards given out at the museum. For those not familiar, when you enter the museum you are given an ID card with the identity of a Jewish person that experienced the Holocaust.

The ID card is very similar in looks to a passport and inside contain a wealth of knowledge about that particular person, including: name, birth day, place of birth, basic background of their family, a summary of their life during 1933-39 & 1940-44, and of course whether they survived the Holocaust. Below is a basic example of the basic layout of the ID cards

ABRAHAM BERGMAN
Born Krasnik, Poland
June 15, 1924

Abraham was born to a Jewish family in Krasnik, a town in the Lublin district of Poland. The town had a large Jewish population. Abraham's father was a tailor. When Abraham was 2, his mother died and he was raised by his grandmother. At the age of 7, Abraham started public school.


1933-39: I liked school but it was difficult. The Christian children often yelled at the Jews, "You killed our God." One year, on the day before Christmas break, some kids brought ropes tied to iron weights to school. They waited until after school, so no one could tell the teacher, and then beat up the Jewish kids. Many went home covered in blood. In 1938 I finished public school. The invading Germans reached Krasnik in September 1939.

1940-45: In 1942 I was deported to the Budzyn, Majdanek and Auschwitz camps in Poland, and then Oranienburg and Flossenbürg in Germany. By spring 1945 I was in a group of 500 taken to a farm area in Bavaria. Only 3 SS guards policed 30 of us. When one guard went to the kitchen and the other took men to look for food, I seized my chance. Pushing through the farmhouse gates, I ran into the woods. Shots were fired; I threw myself down. Two escapees fell next to me. We got to the village of Gern just as a U.S. tank appeared.

After the war Abraham lived in Bavaria for three years. He emigrated to Canada in 1949 and then moved to the United States in 1959.

The Assignment

1. Students were assigned a ID of a person that is the same gender.
2. Students were asked to keep the background information, beginning, and ending of the ID cards exactly the same (italicized portions of the story).
3. Students were asked to recall their studies of WWII and the Holocaust to rewrite the sections labeled 1933-39 & 1940-1944.
4. Students were asked to use real locations and events to help build their rewrite of history and word process the entire identification as a Google Doc.

My students really enjoyed this project, and it has really helped put prospective into their current lessons (WWII) in social studies. You can view an excellent example of this project from one of my students by clicking here.

Mr. McClung

Bacteria, Day 2

I know what your thinking.....the highlight of my day, looking at Mr. McClung's funky mouth germs.....YES!

Below is a picture of the agar from my water bottle sample, which by far has been the grossest result we have had to this point.

Below is a fairly new discovery from last hour science class today. One of our students swabbed the buttons on the ice cream machine and this is what came back. As you can see the bacteria in the third section of the petri dish has spread to all four sections.....so far this location has produced the most bacteria from our testing.

We will continue this experiment until Friday when I hope to post our final observations for this project, in the meantime.......make sure to wash your hands!

Mr. McClung

Observing Earth Day

Today we took some time out of our normal class schedule to observe Earth Day. First part of the day students prepared Earth Day slideshows using Google Docs. Below is one of the many slideshows that was prepared by my students.



In addition to today's events, Mr. C's students brought us 6 frogs, and we decided to create a habitat for our frogs. Students were asked to conduct research about a frog's habitat and living habits in order to prepare an appropriate living environment for them.

The next job was to go scouting for food for our new found friends. Students were asked to collect bugs for our frogs.

So what did we accomplish for Earth Day? Nothing ground breaking, we really didn't do anything to save the environment or stop pollution, but we did have fun with nature. I feel like my students were able to acquire some excellent information about Earth Day during our slideshows research and they were able to have a little fun in the great outdoors today by looking for frogs and food.....I think that should count for something.

Mr. McClung

Bacteria Observations, Day 1

Today we continued with our bacteria discussion in science class. After all that swabbing yesterday, we decided to take a look at our results.

As stated in the previous post, we swabbed everything from toilets to cell phones. Above is a picture of a petri dish from a swabbing of one of our beloved cockroaches. Students were able to spot that there indeed had been some change over the night and bacteria was quickly growing. The type of bacteria that we found growing from the roaches and their environment is called filamentous.

Above is a very disturbing petri dish, because section one is from a sample that I took from the mouth of my water bottle. This was by far the best piece of visual evidence we had yesterday. The type of bacteria found here is called puntiform.

Students were very surprised by the results from day one, many were expecting large growth on samples that were taken in the restroom and lunch room, but the roaches and my water bottle (gross) produced the largest colonies. Tomorrow we will continue with our discussion and observations as we prepare to discuss colony growth.

Mr. McClung