BLOG 22 - Experimental Error

As far as experimental error goes in our experiment, there is a lot that seemed to go wrong along the way. First off, we didn't even end up using E. Coli in our experiment. This was a mistake that we realized we had made after we added Bacillus Cereus to our petri dishes of apple in the beginning. We had not done any research on this bacteria and we did not know if it's effect on the apples would be the same as E. Coli on them. We took a big leap and decided to go with it because all of our plates had already been prepared when we added it and it would have taken at least another 2-3 days of work to fix our mistake, which we did not have time to do. Second of all, a couple of control group petri dishes that we filled with agar before beginning our control group experiment were contaminated with some unknown, outside bacteria. White patches of bacteria appeared in the dishes before any kind of bacteria had even been added. This could have meant that the earlier dishes that contained our apples could have been contaminated as well without our knowing. Also, when measuring the weights of our apples, it is possible that not all of the dried agar was removed from the apple slices which could have effected the numbers that we got in the end. 

Blog 21 - Research Significance

Our group is testing how rapidly apples decompose based on their sugar content when E. Coli bacteria is added to the mix. This is significant because, if our experiment proves that a higher sugar content leads to faster decomposition when sugar-enjoying bacteria are added, then it could be used in things such as dumps. If sugar was added to natural garbage, then the decomposition rate would be much faster and therefore save us a lot of time and space. Our experiment relates to taphonomy, which is the scientific study of decomposition. Applied activities that relate to our group's work so far are just experiments involving decomposition in general.

In fact, here is an experiment design quite like ours but it doesn't use E. Coli.

http://www.sciencefairadventure.com/ProjectDetail.aspx?ProjectID=133

Work in Class on Friday

In class on Friday, our group cut up apple slices and put them into water so as to begin making samples for our control group section of our experiment.

Blog 20 - Preliminary Data

• Summarize your progress with data. Present your information in a table or graph. Add a figure caption for descriptive purposes. (3 sentences)

We are measuring the result of our experiment at the end. On Monday, we will start to dry the apples out so that we can measure their dry mass. We are hoping that our hypothesis will be correct in that the apple slices that had more sugar concentration will weigh less than the slices with less sugar concentration. Therefore, numerical results are yet to be determined. 

Blog 19 - Observations So Far

What have you noticed so far? Are you able to grow the E. coli reliably? Do you have results yet? If so, what are you noticing?

An apple with more sugar concentration, just to see the setup of everything.

So far we have been growing 8 separate dishes of E. Coli. So far, there have been ripples on the agar to show signs of the E. Coli. In the first dish that we tested to grow E. Coli in before we started the whole experiment, there are patches of growth. We have not noticed any direct visual results yet as far as the different in the apples and their sugar saturation, but at the end of the experiment, we shall determine which one decomposed faster based on their dry mass. The apples are doing curious things that we did not expect. They became a bit soupy in the dishes because we could not flip the dishes over. However, the day after they were soupy, everything seemed to have dried up again. This is one error in our experiment that through us off a bit but we are just waiting to see what comes next at this point.