not a moment's rest

Things never seem to be easy over here.
I won't go into the VERY long story about this, but the short story is that Jacob had this science experiment he was working on for school. The science fair is at the end of the month. I spent $25 on petri dishes and agar, and a couple of hours preparing them for an experiment to see if a dog's mouth is actually cleaner than a human's. We were testing to see how much bacteria grew from each of the samples we swabbed. Anyway....Jacob blew it. He was supposed to be following a calendar of deadlines for each part of his scientific method. He did okay until this week, when we found out he was actually about a week behind. He was supposed to be completely finished with his observations and data collecting on Friday, and this week they were to spend three days in the LRC developing their graphs with software they have there. Okay--so here is the problem. We just started the experiment, and have had no growth yet in the dishes, and therefore nothing to observe or graph. So-after talking with his teacher, she is allowing him to start a whole new experiment--a "quick" one, so he can catch up to the rest of the class.

ARGH! That also means he has to do all the other parts over. He has to write a new hypothesis, write the procedure, do research and bibliography, etc. all so he is able to make the graphs at the same time as the rest of the class!

I actually appreciate her letting him change experiments at such a late time in the process......because I was worried about the petri dishes not showing growth in time, BUT this has added urgency to everything we are doing! No rest for the weary over here, for sure.

The new experiment is to determine how different storage temperatures effect the amount of microwave popcorn that pops. He will test popcorn stored in the freezer, the fridge, and then at room temperature. Not quite as fun as the dog/human saliva thing....but quicker anyway. :0)