This week, I worked with a diffrent group since my partner was absent and she had not made a petri- dish for our group. We first did a grams test, which is a test which shows whether the bacteria is gram negative or gram positive. When we finished our test, it was concluded that the bacteria on the petri- dish was gram negative, since it was stained red. The bacteria on the petri- dish was from the chicken we tested. After this, we looked at our petri- dish under a stereoscope. A stereoscope has two eyepieces, unlike microscopes which have only one eyepiece. Under the stereoscope, Kassy and I saw many small rod like shapes in a certain area. They were rod shaped, we guessed that they must be some sort of baccilus. Katie and Alex researched about the four kinds of bacteria that could possibly be the one seen in the stereoscope. In the end, they figured out that the bacteria must be salmonella, since salmonella is often found in food, and also is rod shaped.

This week, my partner Svitlana and I did some experiments with the pond water. We found some things like algae, and even some living things. We researched one of the living things and found out that they may be called cyclopoid copepod or a water flea( Daphnia Magna). The cyclopoid copepod is a crustacean which is the family of all water animals that have shells or a hard covering, like shrimp, clams, mussels, crab, and many others. Under the microscope, the organism did look like a shrimp, with it's beady eye, tail that flicks back and forth, and the curled rounded back. A water flea is fed to fish, or put in the fish's tank, where they double in number, and the fish feed on them. Alex made a hypothesis that if the water flea is fed to fish and since the fish don't die, that may mean that the water flea or cyclopoid copepod may not be harmful. Also, as I mentioned before, there was lots of algae in the pond water. Algae are not very harmful, because they are a kind of plant that grows in the water. We started researching things in the first place because students from a nearby school had many absences, especially the band kids. So we researched and saw that the band kids had gone to a field trip called the Battle of the Bands. We re-traced the steps they took and saw that they had swum in a pond. Some long time ago, our class had made a hypothesis that the pond was dirty, and possibly diseased, and had gotten all of the students sick. This hypothesis was probably wrong, since nothing in there was infected.

This week, I learned all about the structures of viruses and bacteria. We figured out that bacteria were alive. We think so because they have something called the cell wall, which is like a skeleton, and holds the insides of the bacteria in shape, or something like that. A bacteria also has something called a cell membrane which keeps everything in place. It also controls what goes in and what goes out. A bacteria has parts of it which are composed of cells, and a living thing must have the trait of being composed of cells. The bacteria has something called DNA which is something like heredity, and heredity is another trait of a living thing. A virus does not have DNA. Instead, it has something called RNA, which could also be called nucleoprotein. Another thing is that they have NOTHING made up of cells. A virus has a lipid envelope, or fat or oil covering. This blocks all the water from coming in. I learned a lot about viruses and bacterias this week.