But before that, I would like to talk about what happened to our Petri Dish with the bathroom samples. We thought that the Flusher would be the dirtiest thing and the Paper Towel Dispenser Handle would be the cleanest. But boy were we wrong! The part of the Petri dish for the Paper Towel Dispenser Handle had 152 colonies* of bacteria! The Flusher only had 3! We then realized that even the janitors think the flusher is dirty, so they clean that, but they never think of the Paper Towel Dispenser Handle as dirty. So they wash and clean the Flusher, but not the Paper Towel Dispenser Handle and it builds up bacteria and viruses. So that was our conclusion about why the Flusher and the Paper Towel Dispenser Handle had such drastically different amounts of bacteria colonies.
*colony- a group of bacteria made from one bacteria that reproduced.
So, back to Bacteria and Viruses. So for homework, we had to research the structure of a bacteria cell. We found that it had a Capsule, a Cell Wall, Membrane, Pili, Nucloid (DNA) and a Flagella. We also found that it is living because it
-Adapts
-Composed of Cells
-Respirates
-Needs Food
-D.N.A
-Reproduce.
I also learned that the:
Pili and the Flagella- Help it move
D.N.A- displays everything like heredity, actions and controls
Cytoplasm- holds stuff in place
Ribosomes- converts food to energy
Cell Membrane- acts as skin, keeps things contained
Cell Wall- Skeleton
Capsule- Protection
Then we talked about Viruses. We had a discussion on whether a Virus is living or non-living. I thought it was non-living at first- but as the discussion went on, I realized that it was non-living. Here is what we came up with as a class:
-Every living thing is composed of a cell--but a virus has no cell wall/membrane.
-Viruses have no mitocrion-- so the can't respirate
-They use us (cells) to reproduce--they can't if they don't have a human host.
-SOME only have RNA not DNA.
So, we found that a virus is actually non-living.
That is what I learned in science class this week.
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