Hello, everyone! Welcome to my Corner!
In preparation for an AP Biology course next year, I’ve been refreshing myself on some of the major topics. One of the experiments I’m carrying out is a Winogradsky Column; four, to be precise.
On a recent trip to the beach, I dug up a pail-full of sand and carried it on my lap through the entire hour-and-a-half drive home. The things I do for science! The next day, I cut the tops off of four small, plastic water bottles and filled them with the sand up to about two inches from the top. Then I added some shredded pieces of newspaper to two bottles and some egg yolk to the other two; resulting in one bottle with normal sand, one bottle with just newspaper, one bottle with egg yolk, and the last bottle with both newspaper and egg. The newspaper was to provide carbon, while the egg yolk was to provide sulfur. The rest of each bottle I filled with water.
Then I wrapped plastic bags around the bottles and set them outside. I’m planning to leave them there for about two months, checking on them weekly. Here’s a picture of what they looked like initially:
I’ll keep posting results on a week-by-week basis. That way you’ll all get to see all the grossly disgusting, yet fascinating buildup that forms!
Your friend,
Christopher