For take your kid to work day I went with my parents to their lab up at SFU. I ran a gel experiment where I created a solution with the thickness of jelly. Then I put DNA into the gel solution. Using the gel you can measure the size of the DNA by how far the DNA moved in the solution. After that I look at microscopic worms under the microscope then moved them from one plate to the next. And I did it exactly like how you would have thought, grabbed a small metal wire with a flat bottom and literally scooped them off of the plate. Then I went down to one of the high rez microscopes where I got some cool images.
In the afternoon my dad and I started a yeast culture where we took some yeast of a preexisting plate and using a toothpick put them onto a new plate.
I enjoyed doing all the experiments and my day was really fun and exciting. I find that I would be encouraged out of bed each day to complete the experiments and go to the lab because it was very fun.
Inside the lab you could smell a very chemically scent, but when my mom and I brought in some worms, some bacteria had been growing in there and they smelled putrid. Also, you could see vials, tubes and plates of worms all over the place. You could also hear a fan going that was being used for one of the equipment’s. You couldn’t feel a lot because almost all of microbiology is on what you see plus, there are some chemicals that you probably shouldn’t touch, least you want to dye your DNA blue. (Probably not a great idea.)
Here is the yeast culture. The one on the bottom left is the one that we started that day and the other ones are ones that we took yeast from.