A Week of Scientific Observation and Testing

To what places did we go, and what did we observe in nature and find in the water?

Every day the class visited a different waterway, collecting a test tubes full of that area's water. We collected five test tubes full of water from each waterway, and we each filled our tube in a different spot along the water's edge. We then looked for birds and insects and fish, and every time we found something we would identify it and write it down in our notebooks. Then we would look for smaller life in the water by scooping up some water and tiny life into a container. We would bring the containers back to the classroom and look at droplets of water under microscopes to find life forms. Then each of us chose something to draw under the microscope, and we drew it. We then prepared our water for two kinds of testing:

TOTAL COUNT= a test that enables us to count the total amount of bacteria in the water.

COLISCAN= a test that enables us to count the fecal bacteria in the water from warm blooded animals. Coliscan tells you how many E. Coli are in 1 mm of water.

But, before we could count bacteria, we had to prepare the water for the two tests:

1)We wrote our names, the date, where we got the water from, and test name (coliscan or total count) on a Petri dish (or small plastic container), and we did the same with another dish, but labeled it with the remaining test's name. We made sure that the dish with the salt went with the Total Count test, and the dish without went with Coliscan.

2) Then we mixed 1 ml of water with a bottle of cold, Coliscan Easygel formula, and shook it up, then put the mixture in the dish labeled COLISCAN. Then we did the same with 1 ml of water at room temperature, Total Count Easygel formula, shook it and mixed it and put it in the dish. We purchased the Easygel from Micrology Laboratories, LLC.

3) Then we put the Petri dishes under a warm light, to allow the bacteria to grow faster.

4) The next day we could count the purple dots (or E. Coli) in the Coliscan Petri dish, and the number of all the dots (such as E. Aerogenes) in the Total Count Petri dish.

In the state of Indiana there should be only 2.35 or less E. Coli colonies, or purple dots, in the Coliscan test.

The state of Indiana, only uses the presence of E. coli to determine if the water is safe or not to swim in.