Microbe Mission B/C

[Skink]

There is no doubt that this was designed to be a laboratory event. It's BPL with a topical focus, really. Since any prepared slides are fair game, depending on what the supervisor has available, you could be looking at specimens you've only read about, which is pretty neat. There's a limit on skills you need to have, sure...but I'll take operating a microscope any day and every day over another "label-the-parts-of-the-microscope" snoozer. And, I'd definitely be prepared to identify any of the potential live specimens (to the level they're given in the rules plus, maybe, one step further if they're really common) if they're presented as mystery microbes.

The problem is that many supervisors produce boring all-paper tests. I mean, you can always label the parts of the same cell diagram from Google Images...because of that, treating this as a straight study event isn't a bad approach, as it's what you'll see more often than not.

[Sasstiel]

I've always thought of this as a study event, but I guess that may not be the case. I thought the same about Cell Bio last year but they gave us a lab station at nats...

What lab-like activities might we do for MM?

Once at an invite this year there were stations and we had to make a wet mount with a fiber and focus it under high power under a pretty tight time constraint (there were other questions at the stations as well for a total of like 4 mins). That was pretty fun tho.

The only lab-ish things I've had to do is read a pipette and use a microscope.

At a pretty recent invitational, there were stations of 6 mins each and we rotated. Each station was a different thing, and some used microscopes.

[Skink]

6min is really generous...like, that's hardly stations at all.

[Alex-RCHS]

They gave us 10 minutes last year for cell bio nats, but 1 or 2 stations were pretty hard.

Sounds like it would be a good idea for my partner and I to mess around on a microscope in the biology classroom to do some practice. Looking at the practice tests from last year, it seems likely that we'll see most of the following:
- label the microscope
- match the micrograph to the microscope that took it
- name the microbe (pictured or on a microscope)
- diseases (types of microbes that cause them, maybe symptoms/transmission)
plus some other stuff.

[Sasstiel]

They gave us 10 minutes last year for cell bio nats, but 1 or 2 stations were pretty hard.

Sounds like it would be a good idea for my partner and I to mess around on a microscope in the biology classroom to do some practice. Looking at the practice tests from last year, it seems likely that we'll see most of the following:
- label the microscope
- match the micrograph to the microscope that took it
- name the microbe (pictured or on a microscope)
- diseases (types of microbes that cause them, maybe symptoms/transmission)
plus some other stuff.

Did you have any diseases that you didn't have? One station, there was a disease that was not on the list...

[Alex-RCHS]

I haven't been to a tournament this year (there are no invitationals in our state ) so I haven't taken a MM test from this year's rules.

[Sasstiel]

I haven't been to a tournament this year (there are no invitationals in our state ) so I haven't taken a MM test from this year's rules.

At a recent invitational (sorry about that, btw), the stations were 6 mins and you could not go back to a station that you may have needed extra time on. I don't know if it'd be similar or very different...

[Unome]

I haven't been to a tournament this year (there are no invitationals in our state ) so I haven't taken a MM test from this year's rules.

At a recent invitational (sorry about that, btw), the stations were 6 mins and you could not go back to a station that you may have needed extra time on. I don't know if it'd be similar or very different...

That sounds like a plausible setup to me, although the time per station might vary depending on the number of teams per timeslot (though I would expect there to usually be more time per station than for ID events). A setup allowing teams to go back to stations is uncommon, and generally frowned upon (iirc there was a discussion about something similar in the Ohio 2013 thread).

[Alex-RCHS]

Yeah, in past years I've never been allowed to go back to a previous station.

[SOnerd]

This is a question that pertains to both microbes and disease for which I have never found a quality answer: What is the difference in diseases caused by bacteria and diseases caused by viruses? Obviously their causative agents differ, but how do the general characteristics differ? For example, does one tend to cause certain different symptoms?

I have looked online for this, and the only things I can find are websites that list characteristics of viruses and bacteria and websites that give examples of diseases caused by each. (And obvious stuff like the fact that antibiotics don't work against viruses).