Science October 31st

This week we concluded that salminila caused the outbreak at Jefferson and Truman. Salminila fit in every way. It had the same symptoms. It is Gram negitive like our grams test said. Lastly it is a bacteria common in chicken which we had deduced was where the outbreak was coming from. Our lab reports were supposed to explain the prosseses we went through to reach our final decicion.

Now we wanted to know, what is a cell? What are they made of, what do they do, what do they look like? We conducted a test to look at our cheek cells. One slide was made with water and cells, another was made with cells and methaline blue. The methaline blue made the cells more visable under microscope. We saw all of the cells have a dot in the center called a nucleus. We could also just make out other things in the cell. The cells, even for tiny things are very complex. This was proven through homework where we had to draw a labled diagram of animal and plant cells. They are different, but relativly the same. Some things like the vacuole are only in the plant cell and visa versa.

What do plant cells look like under a microscope? We cut a potato into see through slices, then we could see the cells within under a microscope. We used two dies this time. Lugal solution and Methaline blue. Each showed different parts of the cells better. I believe the metaline blue shows the nucleus and lugal shows the other organelles. We also looked at grass which was amazing to look at. Each cell was like a brick and they all fit together in perfect rows. It was like a wall. I couldn't see the different parts of the cell like in the potatos. I think that is because the grass has color and is not clear like the potato cells.

On Friday we played a game to test our knowlage of plant and animal cells. We took a long time with the plant cell and went very quickly on the animal cell. Many of the parts with simaler names and places got very mixed up. The whole week turned out to be a test devised by Mr. Finley to learn if something he learned at a teachers meeting was true, and it was.