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- Some may say the glitter/water mixture that can be streaked to obtain “isolated colonies” onto a homemade gelatin petri dish
- Others will say the shipping box itself, which once punctured a few times will act as a “tube rack”
- Most will agree it is the foldscopes (https://www.foldscope.com/), a paper microscope that once hooked to your phone can achieve 1000x magnification (I have attached my pictures of bakers yeast and sweater fuzz)
- But no, the crown jewel was created last night by my genius wife. By using our kitchen microplane we shaved 40 different colors of crayons into a container. We then tixed in water and aliquoted into 1.5ml tubes. A circular piece of paper is then cut and placed inside of a petri dish. This mixture can then be poured over the plate by the student to create a diverse set of “colonies.” Students can then pick and patch these using the provided “sterile” toothpicks onto a 32 grid on another petri dish–something that is done in the lab to begin to find antibiotic producing bacteria.