iLabs: Return of the "Stranger" and "Mystery Tooth"

Yes, I feel like a stranger here on the education blog. My last posts seem almost a distant memory. But for what it’s worth, we have NOT been idle here in the Micro World. On the contrary, we have been “over the top” in delivering classes, in bigger demand than we expected or dared hope.

Just to give a summary of late September through the end of November, we have done 42 lab classes! The topics were:

• 18 Photosynthesis Labs with Vernier sensor equipment
• 3 Transpiration Labs with Vernier sensor equipment
• 6 Investigate Lab experiences
• 3 Unicellular World labs
• 2 Microscopic Life labs
• 6 DNA Electrophoresis labs
• 1 Cell Cycle class
• 2 Winogradsky column/Astrobiology Labs
• 1 Bioluminescence vs. Fluorescence Lab

Numbers per class have ranged from 10–34. So if you figure an average of 22 students per class x 42 classes … we have been happily reaching over 900 students and exciting them about science!!! And that doesn’t even include the regular visitors we have when we’re not doing classes.

This coming week we will start off December with two back-to-back Introduction to Bacteria classes, a Bioluminescence class, and a Saturday “Holiday Fun, Young Scientist” lab.

So it’s been busy, but GREAT! And we are pleased. In fact, in our non-existent spare time, we are developing even more classes to bring to you in the future, such as how to grow gourmet mushrooms from a commercial kit AND succeed!; an introductory chemistry series; bio-fuels,  fungi and enzymes; nanotechnology; bioinformatics, genomics; advanced Winogradsky columns; Astrobiology; Blood typing and immunology… the list goes on.

So we hope you’ll bear with us during quiet blog times. We’ll  try to amend that, but regardless, always keep tabs on the naturalsciences.org website to see what will be coming in the future for our class offerings.

In the meantime, there was a great “mystery item” photo sent to the museum that generated a lot of guessing, investigating and speculating to reach an identification. For the story of that revelation, check out Dr. Jason Cryan’s blog entry: Mystery Tooth Identified.  Enjoy, and we hope to see you in our classes!!!

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