This week was spent drying aloe vera leaves. I finally got the procedure down right, and just as I thought I was ready to move on to the next step...it turned out that I didn't dry enough aloe. It was more funny than anything because the little I did make wasn't even enough to show up on the gram scale. It's all okay though, next week I hope to make a lot more. As for my secondary experiment, I plated Staph. A today and found 3 new substances to test. Another mixture of aloe vera and ehtanol, lavender essential oil, and tea tree oil. I can't say I have any high hopes for the oils but I tried a different technique with the aloe that I hope will yield better results.
On Tuesday, I plated E. Coli and tested the effectiveness of 4 samples to kill the bacteria. The sample included , Aloe Vera gel (store bought), Windex, Tap water, and 70% Isopropyl Alcohol. This experiment was pretty much used to keep me busy as I haven't yet been able to start a project. However when I came in Wednesday, I found some interesting results. The zone of inhibition was basically 0 for every sample, including the isopropyl alcohol. Although the tap water, being the control, and the Windex doesn't jump out as a surprise to me, the 70% Alcohol does. Originally I had two hypothesis's on why this occurred. One being that because E. Coli is a gut bacteria and therefore is built to withstand alcohol. The second theory suggest user error such as the letting the alcohol evaporate to much before I was able to put the disk on the plate. Because of the results on Wednesday and with the first hypothesis in mind, I chose to do another plate instead with Staphylococcus. I ch...
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