Welcome to Microbiology Lab
Posted by drstocksblog on August 30, 2009
This is a lab briefing blog.
- I publish the blog each week, usually on Friday.
- It contains information for the next week’s lab.
- It is sort of a “heads up” on what we are going to be doing.
- It is NOT a substitute for reading the lab book.
Why a blog?
- Because you can enable a RSS Feed for the blog which means that as I post to it, you can get a message showing I have done so.
- Because I like it!
About Micro Lab
- First of all Microbiology lab meets twice a week: for two hours early in the week, and for one hour later in the week. This is so you can set up experiments one day and let them incubate so you can check the results during the “come-back” lab.
- Yes, lab does meet the first week of the semester.
- Be sure that you have a lab coat (or scrubs or lab apron), a NEW lab notebook, and a lab kit which contains slides, cover slips, lens paper, a wax pencil, and a depression slide.
- You should have these by the comeback lab this week or at the latest by the start of the second week’s lab.
Week One’s Lab:
- This week is important because we’re going over the basics of lab procedures and lab safety.
- We’re also doing exercise 1: Microscopy.
- This includes the proper use and care of the most important tool in Microbiology, the microscope.
- You’ll use the microscope to look at a prepared slide of blood.
- Draw what you see at all 4 magnifications (40x, 100x, 400x, and 1,000x).
- Note that after this you only need to draw what you see at the best magnification to view the specimen (for bacteria that is 1,000x, for protozoa it is usually 400x).
- Label your drawings.
- AND be sure to describe in words what you see. This is an important practice to do because you are seeing things you have not seen before and will be expected to do a number of reports that include your detailed observations!
- For the comeback lab you’ll be looking at hanging drop preparations of a Hay Infusion.
- Be sure to look at your lab book for how to make a hanging drop preparation.
- A hay infusion contains dried grass (hay) plus water from a pond or stream that has been allowed to sit at room temperature for at least a week.
- It will contain a number of kinds of organisms including bacteria and protozoans. (Some may also contain fungal filaments).
- Be sure you take note of the relative sizes of the organism that you see.
