This is going to be the first of hopefully four journals that will show easy experiments that can be done in the classroom or in the field. Each journal will have student handouts, video, and pictures. Feel free to watch the video and see us do the experiment or try to repeat the experiment at home with your own materials. For this first experiment we will be asking the question; Do microorganisms live in Antarctica? Antarctica has such a harsh climate that many organisms cannot live here all year around, but can microorganisms? The research team that I am with is looking at the ice in the Taylor Glacier to see if microorganisms are in the ice and if they are living. It's pretty cool stuff. In our experiment we are going to take ice from the glacier, ice from the lake, and then swab common areas around our camp to see if we can find some microorganisms. To watch the set-up of the experiment, watch the video below.
Watch Us Set-Up the Experiment
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Each day we will take photos of the tubes to see if they are cloudy and if microorganisms started to grow in the liquid media yet. You can use the student handouts and record the results yourself and then answer the questions at the end of the two weeks. All of the daily pictures of the media will be posted below on this journal page. I would love for you to follow along and provide me with any feedback. Thanks!
After only one day, the only tube to have any growth was the table swab that grew in a warm environment. It is hard to tell, but it is slightly more cloudy than the control next to it. All the other tubes are still clear.
At the end of Day 2, we have two tubes with microorganism growth. We have the table swab from the warm environment that we saw microorganisms in yesterday and now the swab of my fingers in the warm environment is growing too. None of the cold environment tubes have grown anything yet.
At the end of Day3, we have four tubes with microorganism growth. The table swab, my fingers, the sediment, and dirty ice grown in the warm environment are all cloudy. None of the cold environment tubes have grown anything yet.
At the end of Day 4, we have six tubes with microorganism growth. The table swab, my fingers, the sediment, dirty ice, clean ice, and the open air grown in the warm environment are all cloudy. None of the cold environment tubes have grown anything yet.
After five days of growth, the only warm environment tubes to not grow any microorganisms are the control, Brent's boots, and ice from Lake Bonney. Why do you think this was? As for the cold environment, there isn't any growth in any of those tubes yet.
We finally have a tube from the cold environment show some growth. The cold sediment tube showed a little bit of growth. Everything else is the same as Day 5. All of the warm environment tubes except for the control, Lake Bonnie, and the boots showed growth and none of the other cold tubes had any growth.
On the seventh day we now have a little bit of growth in the table tube grown in the cold environment. Everything else is the same as Day 6. All of the warm environment tubes except for the control, Lake Bonnie, and the boots showed growth and the only other cold tube with growth is the sediment.
On the 8th day we now have a little bit of growth in the air tube grown in the cold environment. Everything else is the same as Day 7. All of the warm environment tubes except for the control, Lake Bonnie, and the boots showed growth and the only other cold tubes with growth are the sediment and table tubes.
On the 9th day we now have a little bit of growth in the dirty tube grown in the cold environment. Everything else is the same as Day 8.
On the 10th day we now have a little bit of growth in the fingers tube grown in the cold environment. Everything else is the same as Day 9.
On the 11th day we now have a little bit of growth in the clean ice tube grown in the cold environment. Everything else is the same as Day 10.
On the 12th day we now have a little bit of growth in the Lake Bonney ice tube grown in the cold environment. Everything else is the same as Day 11.
We are heading back to McMurdo today, so this is the last day that we will be able to take observations. Nothing new grew today, so the results would be the same as Day 12. Everything in the warm environment grew except for the control, Lake Bonney, and the boots. Everything in the cold environment eventually grew except for the control and the boots. I wonder why the boots didn't grow in either environment?