— Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 — Day 4 — Day 5 —

.
Summary:
Today was the third day of the “Of Spice & Men” project. Students took their agar plates out of the fridge and got to work trying to figure out how to solve this mystery. Remember, the goal of the project is to “measure the human preference for the tastes of different plants and compare it to each plant’s germ-killing effects.” But the big-picture question we are trying to answer is “Why do we like what we like?”

Students took their agar plates and added germs from their saliva to each one. After that, it was time to add the spices. Most groups chose to cover half of each Petri dish, so they could compare germ growth in the empty half of the dish to germ growth in the spice-covered half of the dish, thus building their control group right into each test. The students could then use their separate dishes to compare mint leaves to regular leaves, cinnamon bark to pine bark, or any other combinations they could think of. Tonight, Mr. A will store the dishes in a warm, dark location. We will then let the germs grow for three full days. On Tuesday, we will observe our results.

Resources:
January 25-31 – Of Spice and Men (pg415)