After we had to deal with taking notes and such all week we finally got a break. Our teacher had prepared an exciting lab for us. We got to use gram crackers and frosting to simulate a biofilm. First thing we did was get a paper towel that represented the water. Then she gave us a gram cracker for the use of a substrate. We were using this as an interpretation to show how the spat attached to the substrate and their chances of survival. Since the gram cracker was smooth and most of the spat dont like to attach to smooth objects, we used icing to take the place of EPS. The Red coralline algae were represented through red sugar crystals. Diatoms were portrayed through the brown long johns. Barnicles were shown with rainbow sprinkles and marshmellows. Coral were demonstrated with rainbow long johns. Oysters were depicted with blue or green dots. Once we had placed the icing upon the gram cracker, we then started placing the objects on it. To simulate how in nature not all spat survive. You were supposed to hold it about 15 inches above the gram cracker and sprinkle it on there. Since you were up so high not all of the sprinkles made it onto your gram cracker. The ones that fell off simulated the ones that died as they tried to attach. After you did it with each type of the sprinkles you had to count them up and do some math for a percentage. We were supposed to take a picture for each of the seasons that the plankton went through. Since i didnt have at least 10 barnacle sprinkles i didnt get to attach a marshmallow so it was unchanged. We found the diversity of the organisms. Then we also calculated the species richness by counting the total number of different species we found on the plate. After we had all those numbers we had to find the total number of individuals by taking the abundance colum and dividing it by the total number of individuals. We didn't do anything after that but it was a pretty easy day, that was aslo very educating.
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