Because, you see, all teachers have the idea that our workload peaks just before our exams, and then drastically decreases afterward, leaving us with spare time to laze around and do nothing. So, to help us use our time productively, many of my teachers keep giving us a bundle of assignments because they think nobody else is. So actually I'm busier now than I was before or during exams.
Gaaghr.
Why do we call only textbooks "textbooks"? EVERY book is a textbook, or it wouldn't be a book.
At school (which I live and breathe for) my elective-biology-class-team and I cultivated bacteria from most of the washrooms at school.
It was SO FUN (no sarcasm).
First, we made the medium for cultivating our bacteria. That was probably the hardest part. We chose to make MacConkey agar, because all sorts of fun disease-causing bacteria can live there.
Google searches later revealed to me that you can buy this stuff pre-made. We, however, found a recipe on some website and set about mixing up a bacterial playground. That's wasn't so hard, but it was a bit tedious. Also, the stupid peptone wouldn't dissolve, so we had to chase it around the flask with two stirring rods to try to mash it up a bit. So once it was sufficiently dissolved, we were supposed to pour it into sterilized Petri dishes and put it in a little oven thingy-box to set. The dishes weren't sterilized, though, so our medium had to wait a whole week.
Somehow, during the week it was on the shelf, the fungus growing in the flask next to it (which belonged to another dude) managed to send some adventurous spores out. The spores somehow managed to penetrate the aluminum lid on our flask (osmosis??) and grow in our medium, so that when we checked on it it was unfit for our bacteria (which deserve only the best, you know).
So we made the medium again, mushed up the peptone, sterilized everything, poured it into the Petri dishes, put it in the oven boxy-thing and the DAMN THING DIDN'T SET. So we were left with a dozen or so Petri dishes full of sticky purple liquid, while other people growing cultures already had happy little colonies.
The teacher, who may have been tired of us messing up, asked to see the recipe we used to make the growth medium. He was all, "You need more agar for this to set", because agar is sort of like the grenetine, or gelatine, in Jell-O. It makes it wiggle. This incited much whining, mostly along the lines of "We have to make the medium again?? The stupid peptone won't dissolve."
Luckily, the teacher said we could just use the medium we had and add more agar. We put in way more than he told us to, just for good measure (I mean, bacteria grow on anything, and they like agar, so what the hell). We sterilized it, and it didn't set. Again.
Personally, I think the peptone is to blame. I bet it was old or something. But really I have no idea.
The teacher told us to just give up, and use it as a liquid medium. Because, again, bacteria grow on anything, and we just want to get... well, anything that might be in the washrooms.
I'm stopping here, since it's five to midnight and I have to study for a presentation I have to give. Oh, and print some stuff. And brush up on Psychology, because I have a test...
We sterilize stuff in a big pot.
The last time we did this, we didn't have aluminum foil, so we used a face mask.
The last time we did this, we didn't have aluminum foil, so we used a face mask.
