Bacteria Culture

About a month ago, a microbiologist from SFU came to our class to do a very interesting presentation about bacteria culture. Well, one of the fun experiments we got to do was to swab an object in the classroom onto a gel petri dish, which would let any bacteria grow over time. One of the enthusiastic students from my class asked if she can swab my hair...I thought...well...why not? So she did: hair, roots, and all. ( I shall regret later.)

Today, the microbiologist returned with some of our dishes of bacteria. She had warned us that our classroom's dishes won for smelliest of all the schools she has been to AND the most interesting (what a pleasant adjective) bacteria growth happened on the petri dish labelled--MS.CHEUNG'S HAIR. Well, of course the class and I couldn't wait to see it.

IT WAS DISGUSTING!!! The gel was a pale yellow to begin with but my hair's bacteria growth turned many spots into brown and black mold plus some little yellow and red dots. Of course, by this time my entire class was grossed out by my hair...and so was I! Luckily, our wonderful guest microbiologist Dr. M. explained that this type of growth would've happened on anyone's hair in the class if they had been swabbed..and all it takes is one bacteria to grow a colony...but still! I mean...there was another petri dish done by another student labelled hair...and it wasn't disgusting at all. In fact, I don't think it even had any bacteria growth.

Anyway, the memory and sight of my hair bacteria would take a long time to be erased from my vivid memory. I try to make myself feel better by reminding myself that bacteria is everywhere and we do need them to survive. We weren't allowed to keep the petri dishes, so I found some equally disgusting bacteria culture samples online to give you an idea. My hair one had bits of the same yellow, red, and black growth as the ones in the image.

Now...I'm going to go wash...everywhere.