Personal Reflection

Doing this project has been a lovely experience. My three teammates all collaborated and brought new ideas to the table, we clarified and defined our experiment by working off each others' ideas. We came up with our basic idea the very first day and were interested in measuring bacteria in Pedder Bay. After consulting with Jonathan (who was very helpful) we narrowed it down to coliform and other fecal and potentially harmful bacteria like e.coli. The tricky part was, although we ordered our equipment on time (roughly 2 weeks before April 17) it did not arrive on time. We were unable to conduct our experiment until today, Friday April 24. The even more unfortunate part is that I had planned to be off campus this whole weekend and the group had to do the experiment without me. However, I do feel indebted and will try to do some comparative data with our research within the next few days.

On the day of the group four project, we spent several hours searching for different coliform levels at beaches around the world. We were successful in finding information in California, Newfoundland, and Shuswap Lake (although the graphs were not upload-able for this blog). The exact numbers proved to be a challenge to find. It will be interesting to see how Pedder Bay compares with other places in bacterial safety. Bay jumping is a loved water activity at Pearson and it would be interesting to make the student body aware of any possible dangers.

So what went well? Well our teamwork did for sure. We met several times and worked together in a very productive way. We all brought different skills to the table and appreciated each other. Our concept also was very interesting and applicable.

What didn't go well? Logistics. The mail. If only we could have done the experiment in time for the deadline.

What would we do differently? Maybe extend the experiment over different time periods to see the difference in bacteria, and do it at different times of the day. Also, obviously hope for better luck in the mail.

-Emmy