Journal

12/3/07

Today was the first day of the project. I made the timeline chart with the help of Jack. We discussed on the phone how we would construct the chart and then got on the webpage and made it together. Our bacteria is arthobacter globiformis.We learned how to make a website on wiki and then jack and I finished the timeline over the phone.  I did some brief research on the bacteria and found out that Arthrobacter are your basic soil bacteria. Found to perform several important functions as we continue to poison the earth with various nasty chemicals.

During class I was a little confused on what we were supposed to do but then once I got home I understood the website completely. Jack and I figured out what we would do each day of the week and when it was possible to go to each other’s houses to work on the project. Overall, I think this will be a fairly simple project if we follow our guidelines and try to go above and beyond to get a better grade.

12/4/07

            Today was the second day of the project. I called jack and we took notes over a few of the first questions to get an idea of what our bacteria does. We also edited the wiki to make is more flashy and look better. During class we could not get much done at all because of the terrible band width provided by the school. I think it is from all of the gamers. Because of this we had to take our notes on word and then copy them into the wiki. If all stays as planned we should be on track for a great project.

12/5/07

            I was extremely frustrated today. I could only find one reasonably good source. I looked the entire day for more sources but I could not find any. I also am very frustrated because I am in the middle of writing my application for Hotchkiss. I am trying to decide whether or not it would be a beneficial decision to go there or not. It is probably the toughest decision I have yet to face in my life at the moment.

12/6/07

            Today most of my stress was relieved when I found a couple more sources by putting the bacteria name in quotations. I also read a quote by Abraham Lincoln “success”….. it inspired me to make a wise decision by making me think about how this project will only be worth what we put into it.

12/7/07

            In biology today we swabbed plates with E. Coli and Staph. We then put two different antibiotics on the plates to see if they took any effect on the bacteria. Towards the end of class, jack and I asked miss tucker if we could change bacteria. She said of course because she knew that other people with the same bacteria were having trouble finding onformation as well. She switched us to the oil eating bacteria. I know there will be plenty of information on this type of bacteria and we would be able to make a much more in depth project.

12/8/07-12/9/07 (weekend)

This weekend I was in Houston and got little progress done on the website; however, it was very helpful progress. I made the home page and jack made the toolbar on the side of the website. On Saturday night I went to see the nutcracker and ate out with my family. It was actually not a bad ballet considering it was a ballet. The next day i read an article on how our oil eating bacteria was used in a current event. This inspired me to create a current events part on our project. I fugred we could talk a lot about how our bacteria has helped to clean up oil spills.

12/10/07

Today I went to jacks house and we got a ton of progress done on the website. We are almost completely finished. We found many great pictures and articles about how the petroleum eating bacteria can live in these extreme environments and help significantly to clean up oil spills. We wrote about the background, history, interesting facts, current events, and added some videos and ideas. I wrote about the Exxon Valdez and how it spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into the sea, devastating many animals.

12/11/07

             Today was Tuesday and I did not get much progress done on the project. All jack and I did was collect our sources and site them. I guess this is an important step in the project considering we have to site them.  

12/12/07

            Today I did nothing on the project edit the webpage and make it look better. I changed the skin and edited the side bar just to make things look snazzier. This was because I had to study for ms. Colina’s major art test.

12/13/07

            Today I did a new current event on another oil spill that occurred during the gulf war. The Iraqi’s spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf as an act of war. We are almost completely finished with the project. We will finish this weekend.

12/14/07

            Today in biology we finished our bacteria conformations lab. It was a very confusing lab at first but I figured out what we were doing after I did some quick research about the gram staining techniques and such. After school I was picked up by my dad and we went over to my cousins house. We picked up my uncle and my cousin David and drove to a ranch to go hunting. The drive was not too bad as it was only about 2 and half hours. Once we got there we had dinner and made smores around the fire. We went to bed relatively early since we had to wake up at 5 for our morning deer hunt.

12/15/07- 12/16/07 (weekend)

Since I did not take my laptop I was not able to work on the website, but jack and I did talk for a good 30 minutes about what we were going to do the next day to finish our project.  I went to jacks house at about noon on Sunday and we worked a solid 5 hours to finish and inspect our final outcome on the wonderful website on oil eating bacteria. We even made a word find and added a couple interesting facts to our page.