The hand washing experiment from Biology 120-Integrating Biology provided an insight into the part of Biology I’m extremely interested in. Biology 120 was a class based on the overall subjects in Biology, allowing us to choose which path we wanted to take in our major. When looking at Biology, I think of two different paths, the medical path and the conservation/environmental path. Our labs showed these two different paths of Biology allowing us to figure out what we were interested in which has ultimately allowed me to become a well rounded biologist.

We were told to swab something to collect microbes. We decided to swab the stairwell handrails to see how much bacteria was present in a lightly populated area versus a highly populated area of Chichester. We found that the lightly populated area held more bacteria and concluded that is was probably because of the dust in those areas.

Through this, I decided I was completely interested in learning more about this specific side of biology. This project helped me understand how to culture samples and observe the bacterial growth. I came into college extremely interested in dentistry, but have also become very interested in bacterial growth and other aspects of microbiology.