Our den meeting tonight was really awesome. Just another reason we are so lucky to live in a college town. You really don’t realize all the resources that are available until you actually do live in a college town. One of our boy’s Dad, Dr. L, is a professor in Microbiology. We got to go to the building where he works. The first thing the boys did was put a glow in the dark powder on their hands. First, the boys got to see their hands glow. Then, they went to wash their hands to see how clean they really get their hands. Putting the light back over their hands proved that some of them have decent hand-washing skills, while others not so much.
After that we went into a room where there was a very expensive electron microscope. Dr. L had already prepared some specimens. I learned that the specimens have to be coated in gold before they can be viewed in this microscope.
We got to view the specimens on the computer screen. Why didn’t we have microscopes like this in my biology classes? 🙂
Here we see a wasp head.
After viewing these specimens, we went into a lab, where the boys got to swap their belly button and other body part of choice. After swapping, they rubbed the ‘germs’ onto a petrie dish to see what kind of bacteria will grow.
Dr. L asks the boys other good body parts to swab that may grow some bacteria. Wouldn’t you know that my child raises his hand and asks if they could swab their butt? Yep, my child. The Cub Master’s child. Geez.
Here’s the petri dishes 2 weeks later…
Nose
Bellybutton