April Showers Bring May Flowers

First week of April is finally here and I have a feeling this month is not only going to be extremely busy for all of us but enjoyable as well due to the really nice weather outside.

In the lab, I am more in the process of testing for coliforms! The women's inside and posterior door knobs and the men's inside posterior came back acid positive and gas positive in the SS Lactose broth test which means they can in fact be coliforms present on those door knobs! The women's inside anterior door knob had to be re-tested because it came back negative for acid (no color change) but postive for gas presence and the next day, it came back positive for both. The next step in the process was to test the positive samples in Brilliant Green Lactose Broth or EC broth (the broth I prepared the previous week). Josh and I decided to test in both broths. The results found that all samples came back acid negative (no color change) but the ones tested in the Green Lactose Broth came back gas positive whereas the same samples tested in the EC broth came back gas negative!

Lactose samples that I incubated to test for coliforms

Redid this one because the color change wasn't accurate

These are the positive test tubes that were later tested in LLB and EC

made extra broths just in case, I wanted to re-test the samples, The last one is the redo I did  for the inaccurate color on the lactose tube

Brilliant Green Lactose Broth samples came back negative for acid but positive for gas presence (notice the bubble in the top portion )

EC samples came back negative for both the
acid and for the gas (no bubble presence)

More TSB plates samples. TNTC

In the "Teach me about STEM" this week, we hosted an event on Mathematics. During the event, we had a table with fractals which are "self-similar" patterns which basically means that the pattern would be extremely similar looking at it from a macro scale as well as a micro scale. The following is an example of a fractal. You can Google search "fractals" to see some more amazing examples of these patterns in nature. 

Tomorrow in the lab, I'm supposed to be making another type of broth for the next process in the coliform testing procedure! I'm also supposed to be counting the colonies from today.

Today at the STEM office, I had a wonderful young lady come and talk to me about classes she wishes to take in the upcoming semesters here at Phoenix College. Her name is Sarah and she also wants to be a pharmacist! I gave her tips about taking a class in the summertime and about taking advantage of the resources available around campus, like REACH and the Math tutoring center. She plans to transfer to the University of Arizona next year and I'm excited to keep in contact with her to hear about her adventures and her classes. I love being a STEM mentor because I can share everything I know with other students and it's feels good to make a difference in someones life, even though the effects of if might not be present immediately, I think overtime it will.

Hope you all are having a wonderful week and an even better weekend. Enjoy the beautiful weather before the 120's in Phoenix come creepin'. 

Greetings,
Khadidja