Mould science

Mould science

In class we are doing science. There was three topics to choose from. They were Milk, Bread and Mould. As you would have guessed, I chose mould. Before I went to the class, I thought that mould was just a gray, fluffy thing that grows in places like bathrooms and trees. But now I know so much more! And we are not even half way through! 

There is actually hundreds of types of mould, with slime mould being the one we are going to talk about first. Slime mould grows on the forest floor, doing a very important job of eating the white moss off trees. It is yellow and slowly shape shifts. You can check out a time lapse video on YouTube, cause I watched one at school on this. (Copy and paste that into google to watch it)  It was really cool and at one point a slug wriggled past the branch the slime mould was on. It was really funny because it went past in like... half a second! There is a lot of things about mould that lots of people don't know. Like how penicillin is made out of mould, how it is closely related to fungus, and that mould on lemons is edible. A lot of people brought in mould that they found around/in there house. I brought in the most mould!0.0 that does not sound like what I mean... Anyway, I brought in a GIANT mouldy avocado in first, that was going all shrivelly and fluffy and mouldy. (Sorry, I forgot to tell you that it was a half avocado). The container that I put it in has now got condensation on the inside of the lid.

(and I gave it in on 18/5/16, all those people in the future reading this AMAZING blog post, and now it is 26/5/16 when I wrote this). so you can't see inside, but you can see a blur of fluffy white stuff in different places all over the avo.  Next I brought in a mouldy mandarin, which at first had only a teeny bit of moud,(24/5/16) but now has heaps and has nearly covered up half of the mandarin and its only been two days!!!

  Mould starts off as a spore, Floating around trying to find the right conditions to grow in, and depending on its type, when it finds the right conditions to grow on, it starts right there and then... If the conditions are super-perfect, you might look at your tree today, and tomorrow a whole branch would have been conquered. Mould is toxic and dangerous, so you shouldn't touch any random mouldy applecore you find on the streets 'cause it might be an EVIL mouldy applecore. If you eat mould, you could get very sick.

 I know, your thinking touching something mouldy isn't the same as eating it, DUH!!! But, if you touch something mouldy, some spores might sneak onto your fingers, and next time you eat, it will get on your food, and what do you with food? EAT IT!!! 

So, there's another reason to wash your hands a lot. If you grow your own mould, (Not that you'd know how to, you wouldn't know that sprinkling a teaspoon of water onto a piece of bread and then put it into a Zip-Lock bag for three days it would grow mould) if you ever take it out of its container/bag, always remember to get a thing to cover your mouth and nose with. Some simple ways to do that is pull your shirt over your nose, (Also a good way to become a ninja) Or at a stretch, get a flannel or some type of cloth and peg it around your head. The reason that you have to do that is because some spores will sneak off the mouldy thing and will go into the air and so you don't want to swallow some!

I think that's enough about mould.