Climate Graph

...You don't care about my Europe holiday, do you? You don't care that Goofy kissed me in Hong Kong... You don't care that I am way too jetlagged to do this and the fluid still hasn't gone out of my calves. :(

This is what you want, isn't it? This THING!



I might as well explain my method in more detail too. It's easier for me to use plain English to communicate instead of Step 1 and 2 ect. so I'm going to do that now.

It has been stated on Wikipedia that mould will enter a dormant, non-growing state when conditions do not allow growth. One of these conditions is temperature; between 4 to 38 degrees Celsius is the ideal growing rate. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mold and http://www.realtor.org/realtororg.nsf/pages/moldfaq

My hypothesis is that the lower the temperature is (ie. the colder), the slower mould will grow (perhaps not at all). My aim is to find out whether the above statement, as well as my hypothesis, is true.

Right now I have a small handful of cheese (thanks, my aunt-who-owns-a-bakery-in-Mortdale) inside a plastic bag, sitting on a shelf in my dark pantry. After school I basically come home and handle it. I can't remember if bacteria helped food to mould or not, but I'm trying to help it along; there are little spores floating around everywhere and I must have SOME on my hands. Since mould also needs oxygen, I've cut little hole in the bag. Since it also needs moisture, I cough and breath into it as well. It smells dreadful and feels utterly disgusting. I hope that mould grows soon. If this fails -it is bakery cheese, so it may have more preservatives than supermarket cheese- I shall buy some blue cheese to obtain my penicillium.

(Note: Research if/how cheesemakers stop the mould from spreading on blue cheese once it is ready for sale and consumption. If they don't, we'd be eating more mould than cheese. That would be stupid.)

Just to make sure my mould can reproduce and spread, I'll tweezer a sample onto one slice of bread. If the mould grows, I'll transfer equal amounts onto fifteen slices of bread. Five will remain at room temperature. Five will go into the fridge, at 4 degrees, the edge of survivability. Five will go into the freezer, beyond the point of possible growth. I've mentioned the zip lock bags, haven't I?

Each day I'll check on them, possibly take photos, and measure the area of bread covered by mould. I'll do this with either a transparent square centimetre grid, or if the mould grows concentrically I'll use a pair of compasses and the pi x r squared formula. I know this is rough, but what choice do I have? Tables will be filled in. Quantitaive graphs will be created.

I'm not sure how FAST the mould will grow, so the duration of my experiment is TBA. I'm stuck with this project anyway. But I do believe I have things under control.

You still don't want to hear about the Italian guitarist and the French guy stalker photo and Disneyland? Right.