S-STEM Scholar Jaime Carreon's Blog

   Understanding electrophoresis  For this blog, I wanted to practice electrophoresis, but since I don’t have the lab equipment I wanted to try a DIY experiment. I researched experiments that can be done in the home, and I found a great one that would help me understand a little bit better how electrophoresis works. In this experiment, I will be able to visualize how food color is separated with the help of the electrophoresis. First, I set up my electrophoresis chamber with a plate and a hair comb to form my sample walls.  Second, I made the gel with 200 ml of water, 0.4 grams of baking soda, and 2 grams of agar. The agar was the most difficult ingredient to find. Luckily, I found it on amazon. Like in the lab I proceeded to mix the ingredients, then I heated the solution in the microwave for one minute. I let the solution to cool down for 15 minutes before pouring it into my electrophoresis chamber. Then, I waited an hour for the solution to solidify. After an hour...

Bacteria in my daily life For this blog I choose to talk about E. Coli since in my previous blog I talked about Deinococcus radiodurans. I recently became interested in learning more about other bacteria such as E. coli. I will provide a little background on why I decided to talk about E. Coli. I work in the food industry in a fast food restaurant. I was required to obtain a food handler card. During my training, I learned how easily food can be contaminated especially, if people do not know how to properly prepare food. I believe that being aware of the science behind cooking would be more beneficial if this training was accessible to more people.  In a common household like mine (I share a house with my siblings) cross contamination can occur because they do not have the knowledge on how to properly handle food, for example when cooking  meat and vegetables. For instance, when they cook they do not pay much attention that they often use the same cutting board for different...