There are only 8 more days until Expo! The team is finalizing our lab report, presentation script and website. We are very excited for this upcoming weekend and looking forward to setting up our booth at the theater in Wallingford. We have some awesome props for our table. Make sure you stop by Udder Disaster at Expo!
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Today on Monday, April 25th, our team has kicked it up a notch and taken strong initiative in order to push our Expo project so that it will be ready for Expo Fest on May 20th. I worked on the presentation along with Hannah and Jack (our two presenters) in order to make sure it is spectacular. Hannah, Jack and I discussed our plan for the presentation and what should be included, as this pitch is more of a sales pitch, but still pulling pieces from the presentation at the Palace Theater. We decided that we should discuss more of the economic impact in our presentation in order to relate it to everyone, and that we should also make it a priority to include the scans we obtained from the FTIR instrument to back up our information and conclusions. Cat took a few team members up to the FTIR instrument to demonstrate the process, and Rachel, our videographer and photographer, took pictures and videos as the team continued working hard. Kei-Lin took on the task of formatting the experimental write ups, such as the ones from the IR, melting point, and lawn streak procedures. Natalie worked on the lawn streaking process, checking our Escherichia Coli samples and growing Staphylococcus bacteria. Pattiann and Melanie worked on creating the mathematical model, and planning how our money should be spent in terms of our budget. The success of the first day of our “Expo Week” shows clearly in our project. We hope to continue our momentum throughout the rest of the week in order to come to a strong conclusion as the date of Expo approaches at a rapid pace.
I have really enjoyed all of the days that I have been able to work under the hood. As fun as it has been we have run into many problems. The first problem was that when we first tested all of our essential oils against the staphylococcus, it ended up not being pure staph. We did all of the plates and when we measured the zone of inhibition and last minute we decide to do a quick gram stain to double check if the bacteria was staphylococcus. When I took my gram stain there was a vary of types of bacteria along with staphylococcus. Although it set us back a little, it was also a blessing in disguise because we learned that the essential oils also fights many bacteria and not just staphylococcus and E.coli. The next problem that we are still currently struggling with was that the growth from our hands has not been as much as we hoped and expected. We need to grow pure staphylococcus before Expo day and that's coming up quick! We hope that we have some growing in the incubator now from our hand flora. Other then these two set backs over all as a team we are very hopeful and impressed with the data we have collected so far. The essential oils have been proving to fight bacteria leaving large zones of inhibition, which means these essential oils will hopefully prevent mastitis!
~Natalie Ferrante Today the team kicks off the first day of a special week. It is Expo week! This means the team will spend every single day dedicating our time at AQUA to work on the project. This week we are determined and ready to be productive.
Expo day!
I had the chance to be a part of the prototype and design review session. It was exciting to hear about all of our competitors ideas and plans. We all have completely different projects even though we all have to stick with the theme of fresh perspective, which i found very interesting. It very helpful to hear the criticism of our competitors and judges. I learned we need to know everything about our projects even our flaws and downfalls. I also learned that it is very important to relate our project to the fresh perspective theme as much as possible. Overall it was a productive day and it got me very excited for the true Expo competition. ~ Natalie Ferrante Rachel and myself (Kei-Lin) attended the digital media breakout session. After listening to the adviser's information and tips we then concluded that we need to start updating our launch pad profile because it was very outdated. Social media accounts were mentioned and it was stated that, “the judges love to see progression”. This was an amazing thing to hear because the team has been posting on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and we were initially concerned if the judges would not even look at the accounts. Our goal is to continue building up all of our social media pages and to finish updating launch pad by April 28th because the deadline for all information to be on launch pad is May 1st at 5pm. The big pitch video and team reel was discussed as well. Rachel will be working with Jack and Hannah to make the big pitch video, so that the judges can get an idea of our presentation style. She has been taking photographs of the team to use in the reel. Expo is exactly a month away and the deadlines are approaching quickly, but the all the tips received at the Palace Theater are being taking into account, so the digital media part of our project can meet the requirements.
You can follow us on: Instagram @udderdisaster17 Twitter @udderdisaster17 Facebook Aqua Biotech (Udder Disaster) In this break out session Cat and I were able to clarify some information regarding the team's research. Kerry Macfarland gave an informative presentation about how to present the research, what makes good research, and how we will be judged on our research. We were able to ask her some questions pertaining to our team's research specifically. We learned that we had to write lab reports for each experiment that we do so that the judges are able to see our exact experiments. In addition we learned that we were able to post on our website about each experiment, even if it was not fully completed yet. We shared this information with our team when we were in class the next day. We also began writing our lab reports that are posted on this website. Overall, the trip was informative and helpful for everyone. We all enjoyed our time.
-Gina DiFederico The team had the honor of attending the Expo Fest 2017 meeting at the Palace in Waterbury today. It was such a great opportunity to meet other teams and hear their ideas for their Expo project. Hannah and Jack had presented the Udder Disaster presentation in front of all the teams and Expo Skills 21 advisers during one of the sessions. The team is so grateful for the feedback we received from them and looking forward to presenting on May 20th in Wallingford to the judges. During the breakout sessions the team assigned each member to a different breakout group. After the trip we collaborated and discussed what each session was about. Each member will be posting a blog soon sharing their experience in their specific breakout group. Stay tuned!
After a long week off the team is back in the lab and ready to continue working on our project. Jobs have been designated to each person in preparation for our field trip on Wednesday(tomorrow). Hannah and Jack have been revising their presentation slides. Carley Lutheran and Patiann Piazza have been updating the the prevention plan and teaching our presenters more about it. The website design team members have been doing their best to upload photos to the website so there are great visuals for all to see and understand what our project is all about. We would love to hear your feedback! What do you want to see more of from Udder Disaster?
One of our experiments is to use Infrared Spectroscopy (IR) to determine the structure of each of our materials that will be used in our salve. Many of our materials are known to have antibacterial properties, but running IR scans will allow us to confirm that the product we create with our materials is antibacterial.
At our school one of the teachers, Mr. Sanz, has an IR Spectrometer, which our researcher, Cat, is certified to use. Since the room that the IR is in is so small, only a few people could use it at once. Jack, Hannah, and I assisted Cat in running these scans today, since Hannah and Jack are presenting and I helped Cat do some research beforehand. The rest of our class stayed in Ms. Ebmeyer’s room to learn from Natalie how to “lawn streak” bacteria. The first step to any IR scan is to clean the crystal with alcohol and toilet paper. Next, run a scan of the air. This ensures that nothing is in the air that will alter the results and that the instrument is working properly. Then, put a small drop of whatever is being tested on the crystal and run the scan. If all goes well, a good scan with clean peaks should be displayed on the computer. Unfortunately for us, this was not the case. Since our oils were “100% theraputic grade,” they were not pure. Many of the oils were mixed with alcohol among other substances. When alcohol is a component in a substance it evaporates very quickly, which was a problem that we ran into while testing oregano oil. The IR rejected our scan of oregano oil the first test because the bonds were too weak. In addition, the percent transmittance (T) was not enough (normal range is 100-40%). Our second trial was rejected again because the bonds were too weak. In order to fix this problem we are going to evaporate the oregano oil by taking the initial volume of the oregano oil, putting half of it in a beaker filled with warm water, and letting it sit under the hood overnight. Our next trial was tea tree oil. This trial worked much better than oregano oil because Cat worked faster before the alcohol evaporated. The first scan came out with clean peaks and enough percent T. Our second scan of tea tree oil came out even better. Another problem that we encountered today was our scan of garlic. Because our garlic oil came straight from the plant (we mashed a clove of garlic), the scan looked like a scan of water. In order to fix this problem we have to use pure garlic oil, which we will use on our next IR scan. We knew our scans were accurate because of research that we did prior to today. Cat researched the compounds that were in each of the oils that we are using and we all found IR scans for each compound. Carvacrol, Thymol, Cymene, and Terpinine are all found in oregano oil. Allicin, Ajoene, Dithiins, and S. allylcysteine are all found in garlic oil. Cymene, Pinene, Terpinene, Terpinen-4-01, and 1, 8 ceneole (cenole) are found in tea tree oil. Pinene, phellandrene, cineole, aromadendrene, epiglobulol, piperitone, and globulol are all found in eucalyptus. We compared each of these respective scans the our scan and determined if it was accurate. Despite the small setbacks, today was successful. We were able to get scans of tea tree oil, oregano oil, garlic oil, eucalyptus oil, and our base (beeswax and coconut oil). Tomorrow we are planning on sharing our data from today and explaining to the class about the IR and what its purpose is in our experiment. Written by: Gina DiFederico |
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