Day 2

Yesterday we prepared a streak plate of the bacteria from the lightswitch.  We sterilized the inoculating loop, touched it to the original bacteria colony, and spread it across the streak plate, four times. This procedure isolates bacteria colonies so they can be seperately observed. We then placed it in the incubator overnight. 
Today we removed our lightswitch bacteria from the incubator and observed the growth on the spread plate. The bacteria colonies grew much larger throughout the spread plate, in the streak pattern we performed yesterday. 
Colony Observation: Circular, cream-colored colonies that are slightly raised.  The edges are entire.

Yesterday we also recieved an unknown bacteria in a test tube.  Using a sterilized inoculating loop, we transfered the bacteria to broth and placed it in an incubator at 25 degrees celsius. 
The more transparent tube is the broth with the bacteria and the cloudier one is the original bacteria sample:

Today, we observed the colony growth in a pellicle form, meaning that the bacteria colony formed on the surface of the broth. It was white and circular as seen on the surface below:

We then did a hanging drop slide to observe the colony under the microscope.  In this procedure, we placed a drop of the bacteria-in-broth solution on a coverslip and attached that to a depression slide.  Using oil immersion, we observed the bacteria moving.  In the video below, the bacteria are the small white ovals "swimming" around:

At the end of lab, our instructor demonstrated how bacteriophages kill bacteria cells.  Bacteriophages are bacteria-specific viruses.  He spread bacteria from broth into a petri dish, then traced a design into the bacteria using the bacteriophages. Then we placed it in the incubator.  According to the specificity of bacteriophages to bacteria, we expect to see no bacteria colony growth where the bacteriophages were placed.