Air Cannons, Lanterns and Growing Bacteria!

Science:

This week we continued to learn about bacteria and viruses. We got to do a fun petri dish experiment! We have been looking forward to this for awhile now! Here are our labeled dishes and swabs.

Pre- Experiment

Landen and I swabbed really gross parts of our house such as the bottom of our shoes, the toilet knob that makes the toilet flush, and the family keyboard that we all use to type. Eww!

Our biggest experiment was swabbing our hands. Mom divided a petri dish into four sections. 

First, we swabbed our hands after we used hand sanitizer. Then, later in the day, we swabbed them after going to the bathroom, before washing our hands. 

Next, we washed our hands with water, but no soap and we swabbed them again. We know that water doesn't get all of the germs off, we wanted to test this.

 

Lastly, we used soap for our hands and washed them as usual, followed by another swabbing for the fourth quarter of the dish.

 

When the bacteria grows, we will be able to see how well washing our hands gets bacteria off.

We left the dishes near our living room lamps to create an incubator, we left them there for several days as the organisms grew.

Post Experiment

 Here are the results! Eww! 🤮

Introducing... the bathroom results!

We thought that it was interesting that the flushing knob thing had less bacteria than the door knob. Also, it was cool to see that there was mold growing in the shower mold dish. We saw some black stuff in the shower and thought that it might be mold. The shower has now been bleached.

The kitchen and living room results!

We swabbed the microwave and fridge handles because we knew that with the combination of everyone's hands there would be some pretty icky stuff. The keyboard was the same idea. We also saw some moldy stuff growing in the produce drawer of our fridge, so we knew that that would be very gross. It's interesting to see that the produce drawer dish and the bathroom shower mold look similar in shape and texture. This is what we would assume mold looks like.

Here are the grand results of the super yucky hands experiment!

Also note that my hands dish is on the right side and Landen's is on the left. Thank you.

Our theory is that with all the swabbing, we might have switched the soap and the water swabs. Therefore, the water results may be the soap results and the soap results could be the water results. Long live soap and water!

As you can see, Landen's results are much more ickier than mine. Our theory is that he may have been given a non-sterile household cotton swab to use for the soap section and that may be the cause of him having more bacteria on his "clean" hands than his unwashed and water-washed hands. It is also possible that he is not as through at washing his hands and he was very through at swabbing his hands. 

 We noticed that both sanitizer bacteria looked similar. Also, it was super cool to see that sanitizer does not get rid of germs as well as soap and water does. Mom explained that sanitizer gets rid of most of germs, but it is a well known fact that soap and water are best. Sanitizer can also get rid of the good bacteria on our hands that are beneficial.

This one surprised us. How is mom's phone way grosser than dad's? Theory 1: Mom takes her phone with her to every single store. That is gross. She uses her shopping list app and calculator inside the stores. She touches items and surfaces and then she touches her phone. Meanwhile, dad's phone is around all of the sanitized desks at his work and more. He said that they have to frequently clean surfaces and he cleans his hands several times throughout the day.

Theory 2: Dad puts his phone in his pocket when he isn't using it most of the time. It is either there or on his nightstand charging. Mom sets her phone on several surfaces throughout the day. It sits on the countertop when she uses it for recipes in the kitchen and more. Eww! Actually... when you compare the type of bacteria that is on her phone and the one from the microwave and fridge handle, you see a similarity. Don't worry she sanitized it all!

Here is the really yucky results. And I don't mean yucky, I mean... extremely yucky! What's a word for yucky that I haven't used? Anyway, this is why mom and dad are very firm about not wearing shoes around the house. And why we have a "take your shoes off at the door" sign by the front door. I will wear shoes in the house no more!

Also note that all surfaces were thoroughly cleaned after the experiment. We do not have the most disgusting house of all time! 😄

Tech:

Doodle Crate (Kaylee): I finished my lanterns.

My mom, my sister and I had a tea party. We each worked on a lantern (I only had three left) while we drank tea. There was only one embossing tool, so Emberly used the end of a paintbrush and mom and I took turns.

Here is the finished string of lanterns!

Here they are, all lit up! Aren't they pretty?

Tinker Crate (Landen): I made another air cannon and I played games with my siblings.

There is a matching game, we are playing it here.

There is also tic tac toe and a pitfall game. We were really sad when we had to put it away!

Elective:

Arts and Crafts (Kaylee):

After sewing for many weeks, I was tired of it. So I decided to crochet this cute festive Christmas scrunchie. Isn't it lovely? I am so glad that I have two crafty classes- Tech and Elective!

Building Machines (Landen): I built a transforming plane!

It transforms from this... to this:

It shoots lasers as you can see with the yellow pieces.