Mad Science, Part Two

Remember the Wildcard's science project?

This is what it is, as explained in his handouts from the teacher:

Winogradsky Column

A translucent container filled with mud, water, and other materials such as shredded newspaper, powdered chalk, and egg yolk mixed together. The column is a self-contained recycling system powered only by light. The purpose of the column is to provide an environment for microbes to grow. The concentration of oxygen, nutrients, and light affect the types and amount of microbes that grow. The column can help students understand the growth of microbial communities and the interdependence of microbes - the activities of one microbe allow another to grow.

This is what we have, four weeks later:

The first one we did....


The correct one.....


Pretty, eh?

On Tuesday, as I was making dinner, he explained to me that his current assignment was to take two samples from the water. The first one should be mixed with some sort of anti-bacterial agent, such as anti-bacterial soap. The second sample must be taken to school and examined under a microscope.

I asked him a few random questions about the assignment while he puttered around the kitchen. Before I realized what he was doing, he was heading out the back door with a turkey baster and some of my new Tupperware.

Ummmmmm......I don't think so. Not only does the stuff look nasty, one whiff will take years off your life.

I quickly explained how he could get samples of the gunk with an ordinary, disposable drinking straw, and place them in a ziplock sandwich bag, double bagged.

With that, I thought he had it all under control. (I don't know why, the entire experiment has been one mess after another.)

A few distractions later, I walked into the kitchen and found stinky green stuff in my kitchen sink. One ziplock baggie was next to the sink, and the other was inside the sink and bubbling over. Both were covered with a slimy substance.

The Wildcard had disappeared.

Really makes you all want to come to my house for dinner, doesn't it?