Science Fair Project

[MrWalrus123]

Hi guys... the science fair is starting at my school and I have an Idea.

My project is loosely based after the "Miller-Urey" experiment; if you don't know what that is, it was an experiment to find out if organic compounds and acids could be produced in a basic environment (the young Earth, or the experiment). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment

Unlike that test, I instead will be testing to see if Amoebas could survive in different environments that have been experienced on our blue planet, which ones they thrive in, and which ones they turn into a cyst in (if you don't know, amoebas turn into hard lumps in difficult environments, just like the tardigrade.)

I am looking for suggestions on things I can improvise on, or other ideas to simulate environments.

Sorry if my grammar was poor, of corse I am more of a science person.

and yes I have a microsope

[Mazon Del]

Not exactly my field, but I might suggest that you have two ways of going about this given the somewhat limited time/resources likely available to you.

The first is my recommended course of action, which is that rather than going for a large variety of environments you pick one subset of that and then do several experiments in ever more "extreme" versions of that environment. The reason for this is that it will be easier for you to create one environment simulation and tweak it to be "worse" than for you to make a wide variety of them.

The second is that if you do want drastically varied environments, that you don't go for too much "depth" within them. Try to balance out how "far" they deviate from normal conditions. But for resource limitation reasons you probably don't want to go too extreme because it will likely give you very little data beyond "If I put the amoeba's in pure acid, do they die? Yup.".

Good luck! Let us know how you do!

[Findthepin1]

Early Earth? 230 degrees Celsius and a hundred ATM of carbon dioxide and a little bit of nitrogen. Oh yeah and the acid. And the tidal waves from the Moon being an inch from the ground. And the thunderstorms. And the constant meteorite impacts.

Have fun

Also, you should try doing it in Mars conditions if you have time.

btw when you're done with that please try it in Duna and Eve conditions lol

Edited October 14, 2015 by Findthepin1

[problemecium]

^ So I'd take this comment as a prediction that the amoebas will form a cyst in Hadean atmospheric conditions ;P

I say good luck! This sounds like a pretty smart idea for an experiment, being useful yet still practical for a Science Fair project.