books and bacteria...

My father (physician and medical historian) bought my son (silly 8 year old) a very cool book/kit at the start of the summer. It is basically a set of five petri dishes, some powder to make a glucose/gelatin culture medium and a few swabs for taking samples and a cool book called "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly! A Book about Bacteria and Germs (Luann Columbo, 2004). A few weeks ago, Aidan, Eli and I read the book and then collected five samples: one each from our cheeks, one from the cat's cheek (he enjoyed that a lot) and one from several sample points on a toilet in the house.

I won several jellybeans from the boys as they did not believe that their mouths would grow more interesting things than other spots. The picture does not do it justice, but suffice it to say that upper left is cat, bottom left is toilet, center is Eli, upper right is Aidan and lower right is me. The cat and toilet have very minor growth but are largely clear...the human mouths are...well...vile *laughing*.

Aidan is fascinated and has taken out another book on bacteria and viruses...he even recogized that my IM icon is an ebola virus (I'm ever so proud). He looked up after reading a section on how viruses can mutate and said, "who knew reading science books could be so cool." He wants to read the Hot Zone *laughing*.