LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON - Junior high students at Thomas Simpson School are disgusted with themselves, or at least the bacteria living in and on their bodies.

Melissa Pascua-Matte, left, and Tiffany Larter use their shirts to dampen some of the smell while they examine bacterial cultures they grew as part of a junior high science experiment. - photo courtesy of Steve Nicoll

As part of their Grade 7 to 8 science curriculum students learned about culturing bacteria. Before Christmas teacher Steve Nicoll had the students take samples from their clothes and bodies and try to grow bacterial cultures from them.

The objective was for students to realize how much bacteria is living around and on us, Nicoll said.

The samples seemed harmless enough when they went into an incubator before the holidays but elicited exclamations of disgust and quickly-covered noses when they came out this week. Many of the petri dishes were filled with multi-coloured fungus.

Gabrielle Sanguez, 12, chose to use one of her eyelashes for the experiment. After a few weeks in the petri dish accompanied by a growth medium the eyelash gave rise to a layer of white tendrils dotted with tiny black spots.

"It's gross," Sanguez said while waiting for her turn to use a microscope to get a closer look at the culture.

Sanguez's lab partner Mary Drake, 12, tested a popular substance, her own spit.

Drake thought the spit would stay as just that. Instead her petri dish, fresh out of the incubator, contained a dark green fungus.

"It's gross and stinky," Drake said, her voiced muffled by the sweater she'd pulled over her nose and mouth.

Drake said the experiment taught her that almost anything can grow fungus if you give it a bit of sugar.

"Bacteria's really nasty," was Kevin Roche's conclusion.

Roche, 13, who also used his own spit, grew a white bacterial cloud that radiated out in circular rings on the dish.

"The first thing I thought is that's in my mouth," Roche said.

The experiment, however, isn't stopping there.

Students in the TAG 2-3 class voted on which of the cultures they want to pit against the best culture from the TAG 1-2 class. Placed in the same petri dish the victor will be chosen by which culture takes over the most space after a week.

"May the best bacteria win," Nicoll said.

After the votes were in, the class chose to put Julian Porter's culture forward as their champion.

Porter used a toenail clipping to grow his rather virulent and multi-coloured culture.

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