Micro Lab

My journey to nursing has me in a classroom this summer at UW sitting in Microbiology lectures and working in Microbiology lab. The first lab assignment was to collect microorganisms from various places - your skin, bathtub, sink, etc. and then incubate them at room temp on TSY medium (a growth medium). So I got to work. I split my petri (reminds me of land before time) dish into 8 different sections and started inoculating...my ear, fingerpad, fingerpad after purell, shower, tolietseat, cell phone, and computer keyboard...one was left blank because I ran out of sterile swabs.

A week later I checked in on my work and found some interesting results...

• Purell doesn't work...MO's grew ferociously...although there was a little less diversity than the original fingerpad sample.


• My ear was freakishly clean - only one little colony (I think it was a stray from the air)


• The colonies from the shower were (not surprisingly) the same color as the pinkish gunk that builds up between cleanings.


• The sample with the largest growth, fuzziest growth and most diverse growth was....wait for it....the computer keyboard! SICK! but I do use my computer everyday, multiple times a day...and think about all the places your fingerpads touch...it was disgusting. Let's just say my next project is to research ways to sterilize/clean my computer and cell phone (it wasn't any prettier!)

I wish I would have taken a picture in lab...next time I'll bring my camera so you can all be enlightened in regards to the microscopic world!