Cider vinegar experiment

The start of our cider vinegar.

Very few people know how vinegar of any type is made.  Fortunately for us it is a very simple biological process that anyone can do.  If you have a large open mouth glass jar, juice, and a breathable cover you can make all kinds of vinegar types that potentially taste far better than what you buy at the grocery store.  The container must be glass, wood, or stoneware because the acid produced (acetic acid) will dissolve metals.  Also, the juice must be preservative free but can be any type of juice you want.  I have only experimented with apple juice but other juice like grape juice works well also.  Experiment with other types of juice or even by adding flavorings of maple syrup, molasses, or honey.   Warning though, do not over fill your jar, leave at least a few inches of space between the juice and the jar.  If you over fill your jar the juice may overflow and leave a disgusting mess.  In order for your juice to turn into vinegar it must be open to the air on the top so your jar must have a large mouth.  It is extremely important to cover the jar mouth with some type of breathable cover, if you don't you will quickly have a major fruit fly infestation.  And by major I mean lots of flies and lots of potential grossed out people.  We have found pantyhose to work best.  Other covers such as cheese cloth still occasionally allow fruit flies to access and reproduce on the surface of your juice.  But if that happens to you the entire project can be turned into a study of the fruit fly life cycle, something you may or may not have any desire to know about!  But we are making cider here, so once everything is mixed and covered up, place the covered jar in a location where it will not be disturbed and wait.  The entire process will take four or more weeks and the results will surprise you in more ways than one!  It will be extremely stimulating in smell, taste, and sight.  Stop by your container every day and observe what is happening.

The juice will not automatically convert into vinegar though some spontaneous generation.  Atmospheric microorganisms will inhabit the juice through the breathable cover.  First, yeasts and fungi will proliferate in the juice causing fermentation and the production of alcohol.  Then, after fermentation is complete Acetobacter sp. bacteria from the atmosphere will inhabit the now alcoholic juice.  These bacteria will convert the alcohol into acetic acid and thus your vinegar.

We started a batch of apple cider vinegar yesterday and will be posting the surprising results in a little over a month.

October in the Arizona desert means one thing...

October in the Arizona Sonoran Desert means its time to start planting the fall/winter garden.  Here we are able to grow things productively 12 months of the year.  October through May its easiest to garden, then June though September gets pretty difficult with our intense sun and heat.  But starting this month I will be planting two different gardens, one in the biology departments garden area and a second at my home.  The Phoenix College biology garden will be approximately 150 sq. ft. and my home garden 100 sq. ft.  In order to make this more of a "scientific" garden observations of plant growth and health will be made on a weekly basis and produce will be quantified.  I want to see how many pounds of food can be produced from these plots of land and then determine the value of this food in dollars.  This is a project that anyone can do, by making it as large or as small as they want or need to.  This can be done at a large scale like we will be doing here or even to the small scale of a single potted plant.  The key to make this work as a scientific activity is to record observations and quantify some aspect of the plants.  We will be keeping a garden journal to record progress, failures, and results.  Later quantified results will be posted on this blog.

This is the Phoenix College Biology Dept. garden area.  

150 sq. ft. of the above plot will be used in this project.

The great thing about any gardening project for the student is that it is extremely flexible.  Projects can be as large or small or simple or complicated as fits the needs of the students.  The amount of scientific knowledge that can be derived from gardening is extremely underrated.  In order for the student to learn the most from their gardening experience the right questions must be asked and the right observations made.  This means planning ahead.  Don't just plant a bunch of seeds and see what happens, plant those seed with a purpose and plan to answer some question.  In my project the question simply is, "how many pounds of food can I grow and what is the value of that food?"  Other questions may involve different fertilizers or soils, comparing hybrid crops to heirloom, or different planting techniques.  Check back in the coming moths to see the results of our gardening experiment.

What the "Practical Biolgy" blog is all about (hopefully)

You do not have to have fancy or expensive equipment to run high quality, meaningful biology experiments.  Most everything you need can be accessed through a computer, a local hardware store, or grocery store.  This is one of the more important truths I have learned in my nearly seven years as a community college lab tech and four years as a biology professor.   Most teachers struggle with a general lack time, resources, and money in order to run successful lab activities.  I have also found that too much money and resources sometimes seriously distracts from a meaningful learning experience.  Most educational experiments are most effective when they are simple and to the point.  Overly complicated experimental equipment and procedures result in students focusing too much on on carrying the experiment out and too little on teaching results and concepts.  Low budgets and lack of resources can actually be an advantage to obtaining real results and practical learning opportunities.  While it is often very difficult for teachers to look beyond complicated equipment and experiments, a little creative thinking that looks beyond the "typical" complicated science can go a long way.  Science should be practical and productive for non-scientists and in order to make it so we need to think simply in our application of complex content.  It is my goal with this blog to apply simple, practical, and inexpensive techniques in order to teach more complicated subject matters.  Many simple lab activities can illustrate more complicated subject matter and actually produce something interesting.  For example, yogurt making illustrated fermentation, microbial communities, food preservation, among other things.  Gardening can be used to demonstrate a whole host of things from soil structure, plant biology, and economics.  Hopefully we can wade through these and many other experiments for teaching purposed in the future of this blog.