We did it! Week 14 is finally here! I am finishing my presentation today and will submit it by the end of the night, hopefully. I am beyond excited to watch everyone's presentations this week! Reflecting on my experience over the last two semesters, I must say I have met some amazing people and am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to learn alongside each of you. I was unsure of what to expect but found myself pleasantly surprised by the joy I got from working through both my experiments. I have developed a love for science that I'm not sure I ever had. I find myself questioning things more and wanting to conduct experiments to find answers to my questions. I have a newfound appreciation for scientists and the time and effort involved in conducting research. Thank you again for allowing me to be a part of an incredible cohort of learners! Best of luck to each of you in your future endeavors! 

https://memegenerator.net/instance/61754955/chemistry-cat-thankyou-for-your-science-time

 I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving break, caught up on rest, and spent quality time with family and friends! I can't believe the end of the semester is next week - time has flown by this fall. I received feedback on my rough draft and will work on clarifying my graphs and evidence. I will also continue developing my final presentation and look forward to watching each of your presentations. On another note, I took Dante to the mall this past Friday and he was the star of the show! He brought so many people joy! I was joking with my daughter that there is a good possibility someone out there will be getting a Great Dane puppy for Christmas after our excursion.

 Week Twelve is here! Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I was able to finish my rough draft last week and get it submitted. I will begin working on my presentation soon. I plan on submitting my rough draft of the research paper to the writing center. If you haven't taken advantage of the service through Phoenix College, I highly recommend that you do! The staff are amazing and give quality feedback promptly. You are required to upload your work as well as the assignment details and can also choose to upload the rubric. Each time I have used the service online, it's a simple process to submit your work and it took no more than three days to receive feedback. Enjoy your time with your family and friends this week!

Week 11 is almost complete! I just finished the rough draft of my research paper! It took more time than I anticipated, but I think I was able to incorporate all the requirements. I have included a screenshot of the abstract. I hope everyone else is moving right along with their papers. If you have any ideas for furthering this research, I would love to hear from you in the discussion board posts! Next week will thankfully be a lighter load for schoolwork, and I am so grateful for that! I applied for another internship opportunity for next semester. The posting said interviews will be held in December, so hopefully I will hear something soon! 

 

 There are only four weeks left—time is flying by! As we approach the end of the semester, I am anxious to see everyone's presentations and project results. I will begin analyzing my results and creating plots for the data I collected. I was able to answer some questions I had before starting my experiment, but I found I developed additional questions throughout the process that I would like to test. I may just have to continue this study in the future! I want to test the various sponge cleaning habits people have in their kitchens and see what practical sanitation methods are most effective. What are your habits when it comes to cleaning?

https://imgflip.com/tag/time+flies

 November is my favorite month! The weather, the energy, the change, the beginning of the holiday season, and so many more wonderful things! In the lab this week, I am working on the third trial of my experiment. I have received fairly similar results. With that being said, I have observed some notable differences that are positive. Most likely this will be my final trial since the results correlate with each trial. I will begin writing my rough draft next week and have enough data and images for a thorough presentation which is nice compared to last semester. I had a lot of audio data, but no images, so creating a presentation was slightly challenging. Hope you all have a great rest of the week and weekend!

 What a beautiful week! I absolutely love this weather! I have been busy in the lab the last two weeks. Last week I completed the first trial with interesting results and lots of bacteria! In the first trial I simply washed dishes, then rang the sponge out without rinsing the soap, then plated. I was curious what the results would be if I rinsed the sponge under water until no soap was present after cleaning, rang it out and plated. So, this week I am running a second trial to test my hypothesis. I suspect that by rinsing the sponge after cleaning dishes until no soap is present, the bacterial levels will decrease compared to forgoing this step. The second trial aligns more with the way I clean at home, so I will be interested to see the difference in results. I plan on running both a second time to confirm the results. 

Trial 2 Bacteria