Education
Education
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Teachers- If you can post a link to our website from your schools' blog, we will give you $50 worth of FREE supplies. Email us a link to your schools blog and we will send you a coupon code for $50!
If you are looking for project consider the following:
- How much time do I have? (hours, days, weeks, months)
- What is the goal of the project?
Hours to work on your project?
Short duration projects are ones where you will need lots of culture at the start, and will use the culture up as part of the project. Lots of algae torture (do not worry, they do not scream).
- Bleach the algae! Determine how much bleach (sodium hypochlorite) it takes to remove the color from algae. Visually awesome project with results that take just a few minutes.
- Chemical Killing: Like the bleach project, there are many chemicals that can kill algae. Find the LD-50 or lethal dose for half to die (50%).
- Heat kill the algae. Heat the algae to find their lethal temperature range.
- Measuring photosynthesis. If you have an oxygen meter or are brave enough to use wet chemistry, you can for sure measure photosynthesis. If you are using color to measure O2 production, be sure to get a larger organism, like spirulina then filter out the algae so that the color of the algae does not interfere with your colorometric readings! Also you can measure photosynthesis by looking at changes in pH. Use Chlorella for that as it has only a small amount of carbon buffer in the water (fresh water media).
Algae cultures are found here. Also consider a secchi stick to measure optical density (a method for quantifying the biomass in the water)
Days to work on your project?
The theme for many of these is to observe a quantifiable change over time.
- Measuring growth rates: This is a little bit more of a challenging project, but great for high-school on up. Grab your spectrophotometer, set it at 750nM and measure from 2-10 times per day. Have an undergrad lab technician that is looking to earn browny points? have them measure in the light and dark every hour for a full 24 hour cycle. The data will look awesome with growth in the day and loss at night, besides, they will remember that project for the rest of their lives!!! Use our secchi stick to measure optical density if you don't have a spectrophotometer.
- Experiments: Color, Light, Toxicity, .... grab a bunch of flasks (keep your replicates at LEAST 3, preferably 7) and expose them to different treatments. Measure the optical density (secchi stick) and plot over time.
- Pigment extractions: Takes a couple days. Day-1 harvest and dry algae. Day-2 extract pigments. They all have green pigments extractable with acetone (chlorophylls, and carotenoids). Some (spirulina) have a water soluble pigment called phycocyanin (read ok for little kids!). It is bright blue and fluoresces blood red!!! We will have to make a youtube video on this, it is really cool.
Weeks to work on your project?
- Demonstrating Batch Cultures: Here you can describe a population of organisms from LAG, EXPONENTIAL GROWTH, STATIONARY PHASE, and DECLINE. This is a great analogy for human populations, or other systems in nature.
- Controlled growth experiments: Actual experiments. Check our page on the scientific method for suggestions on experimentation.
- Stressing the Algae: Just like exams and traffic can stress humans, algae can get stressed. Just like humans who adapt to the stress by studying or taking the train, algae adapt by changing their pigments. Here are some examples of experiments involving stress:
- Green to Red pigmentation in Haematococcus and Dunailella salina by stressing them with high light and salt. This is a really awesome experiment.
Algae Research Supply: Algae Culturing Project Kit for 25 Students: 7-14 day project. $3 per student.
$ 75.00
Students will use the scientific method to learn about the importance of algae in aquatic systems: the process of photosynthesis, algae's role in the food web, algae's sensitivity to water quality, and algae's impact on water quality through events like harmful algal blooms (HABs). This lesson offers endless opportunities for discussions on topics like nutrient acquisition, effects of climate change, human impacts and nutrient pollution, dead zones and HAB’s, aquaculture, resource limitations, trophic transfers, predator prey interactions, and much more.
The kit contains:
- 1-Liter bottle of Nannochloropsis algae
- 25 individual test tubes and labels
- Small vial of nutrient media and bag of salts
- 25 secchi sticks
- Algae culturing manual
- Detailed Lesson plan, 8-pages
- Data collection sheets
You will need:
- a gallon of spring water
- Large bucket to mix the media
Algae Research Supply: Algae Harvesting Screen
$ 27.95
This is an Algae Research Supply Spirulina Harvesting screen. It has been specifically engineered to separate colonies of spirulina from water. Videos of this device can be seen on our youtube channel- (https://youtu.be/LTdGdRQPBeU) This can be used as a sieve for projects. It is constructed out to PVC and polypropylene screen and is 35 uM in mesh size. View full product details
Algae Research Supply: Algae Culture for Six Algae Strains for classroom investigations
$ 27.50
Algae survey kit includes 1.5 ml culture and culture booklet:
- Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis)
- Nannochloropsis
- Porphyridium
- Chlorella vulgaris
- Isochrysis
- Pyrocystis fusiformis.
- Algae culturing manual
Our scientists have been working with algae for over a decade. This is a premium culture set that is very well taken care of. It is robust and will perform in your laboratory or classroom.
Algae Research Supply: Algae Bloom Experiment Kit: Is my local water likely to have an algae bloom?
$ 25.00
This is a kit that explores if YOUR local water could have an algae bloom.
Hi Teachers, Students, and Parents, This lesson plan and experiment kit is an empirical method to test if your local body of water will have an algae bloom. It contains a detailed four-page lesson plan with experiment instructions. Also included are liquid nutrients (sodium nitrate, sodium phosphate, and a complete algae nutrient mixture) you need to supply household bleach. The experiment involves collecting water from a pond or lake near you, then dividing it into 5 different treatments. You will use plastic drinking water bottles as your culture flasks. The treatments for this kit are a positive-control (algae culture), negative-control (chlorine bleach), test for nitrogen limitation (sodium nitrate), and test for phosphate limitation (sodium phosphate). The test can be repeated many times to get replication. We include a secchi stick, so that you can quantify the algae growth, using Beer-Lambers law. (You can see a video of the secchi-stick on Algae Research Supply's You Tube channel). Soon you can see a video of this product also.
Algae Research Supply: Algae Research Kit: Culture and Supplies for a Science Project
$ 23.95
This is kit designed to give the student the tools to do a science project. It includes
- Starter culture, 50ml concentrated algae (Nannochloropsis)
- Culture Tubes, self standing, 50mL x8
- Salts, (sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, and trace metal containing sodium chloride) four packs that make 500mL each
- Instructions for cultivation
- Pipetter, polypropylene, graduated with 3ml capacity.
This kit is good for two groups where an n=4 is used: one treatment and one control. Lots of folks use this for science fair projects. Sometimes they also get some extra culture Nannochloropsis) if they are short on time and want to explore different ways to KILL algae. This is a good kit to start out with if you are curious about algae experiments.
View full product details
Algae Research Supply: Secchi Stick
$ 2.00
The Secchi Stick is a simple analytical device to determine optical density of a liquid. The depth at which the disk is no longer visible is taken as a measure of the transparency of the water. This measure is known as the Secchi depth and is related to water turbidity. We have a video on it's operation on youtube. View full product details
Algae Research Supply: Tissue culture flask
$ 1.50 $ 3.00
This is our signature 50mL culture flask. It is great for growing algae or other microbes. It comes sterilized to our warehouse in packs of 10. The packing is opened for individual sale, but the flask is unopened so it can be considered sterile (but not by FDA standards). View full product details
Algae Research Supply: Self Standing Culture Tubes, 50ml
$ 1.00
Self Standing Culture Tubes View full product details
