An inside source for the Inquiry HUB
Today we pretty much wrapped up our inquiry project. We added all the pictures to our inquiry project (except for one) and put most of the cultures into the beginning stages sclerotia. All that’s left to do now is create a website, present to the class and continue experimenting with our remaining culture.
Today SCK and I did all the writing for our power-point and had a talk with Mr. Sarte about dealing with our contaminated cultures, the result being that he would bring some bleach from home. Tomorrow, we will complete our power-point (add the pictures) and put most, if not all, cultures in their dormant state.
Brown and white mold has been rampaging the majority of our cultures. Thankfully the maze culture has escaped to a new petri dish, where it will be our focus culture; all the salvageable will become sclerotia tomorrow.
Today the city, tomorrow the world! We have our power-point all planned out now, so on Monday we will simply have to write it out as we have it on paper, in presentation format with all our pictures of the maze included.
Today I redid my infograph and am finally going to post the finished product after receiving critiques from my mum, brother and SCK. (I recommend viewing it at 100%)
You wouldn’t believe the variety of stuff that’s growing in the nutrient agar plates! Some have dense forests of white hair, one has a coat of a lichen like mold and still others have purple and orange spots and prehistoric looking pink blobs. I added oats to some of the cultures and relocated the rest. As soon as SCK comes back, we can begin working on our presentations.
Today SCK and I changed the oats in the once-dying cultures and calculated the average growth per hour of the maze culture.
At the 33hr 51min mark, culture #1 (the original one) solved it’s first maze. It took much longer than we thought it would, but we expect that that was because the maze was so large and we didn’t start it off with enough of a culture to move at it’s fastest speed. Today we again exchanged new oats for moldy (some had full fledged hair) and abandoned ones, as well as continued working on our second attempt at sclerotia.
Today we finally put the slime mold in the maze! We estimated that in 10.22 repeat hours (by 7:36pm) according to it’s fastest growing rate it would solve the maze, but now it’s not looking like it. It’s grown about 3mm since we sub-cultured it almost 5 hours ago so I’ll be taking it home again. Perhaps we needed to put more in?
1. INFOgraph open office
2. INFOgraph Microsoft
The sclerotia is no longer sclerotia, it is now once again slime mold. However, one or two types of mold have settled in with it, arising new questions like ‘is it affecting the slime mold?’ and ‘is there a way to prevent this from happening in the process of reviving it, or is it unavoidable?’. To get these questions answered I’ve posted them to the UBC Gardens’ continually growing discussion thread in the hopes that they will be answered by our reliable experts.