Biofilm Simulation at the G.C. Marine Reserve

 Biofilm Simulation at the G.C. Marine Reserve

 

Dear Mama,

On Friday in Mrs. Richardson's Marine Ecology class we learned about organisms growing in the ocean on a surface called a Biofilm Plate which means in simpler terms life on a thing. In our experiment the paper towel simulated as the ocean. Then we used icing which simulated Extracellular Polymeric Substance, or in simpler terms "slime", that allows the organisms to settle on the biofilm plate. As you can see from the picture above we had a lot of yummy goodies on our graham cracker! Those yummy goodies simulated as organisms and bacteria that grow in the ocean.The life saver in the middle acted like a bolt to keep the plate stable. The red sugar crystals simulated for Red coralline algae' the brown long johns for Diatoms, the rainbow sprinkles and marshmallows for Barnacles, the rainbow long johns for coral, and the blue or green dots for oyster. Then what we did is we counted how many of each organism we had! For the Red coralline algae I had 58, for the Diatoms I had 18, for the Barnacles I had 41, for the Coral I had 15 and last but not least for the Oyster I had 9! I compared and contrasted the different numbers my classmates had for their organisms and learned that in the ocean its the same way. Every biofilm plate has a different variety and number of organisms that grow on it. The best part about the experiment was that we got to eat the graham cracker and it was super yummy! :) I enjoyed this experiment!