Grow your own
My father teaches a core microbiology course in his department, which involves getting 1st year undergraduates to not chew gum, not wear open toed shoes, not wear hats, sit still for 20 minutes, listen to him, and plate out a variety of substances on a variety of bacterial media, then stick them at various temperatures overnight. the idea is that the following day, the students will have a nice selection of growths on their media, and this will then lead to a discussion about what has grown, where it came from, why that particular species likes living there etc etc.

However, dad gets bored with doing this year after year with endless numpties to teach, so he's been experimenting with them to see how far he can get them to go. It started with nasal swabs ('stick this cotton wool swab up your nose, then spread it on a plate'), but over the years he has got them to do swabs of cheek cells (not so exciting), between their toes, under their arms, behind their ears, and he has been suggesting for the past 5 years or so that they do vaginal, urethral (right word?) or anal swabs. This year 2 of them (females) took him up on the idea (they were sent to the toilet to do the actual swabbing). He said the results were fairly dull, as the media they used was the wrong pH to grow much, but he's wondering if he can get any more extreme. I suggested tramp swabs, but couldn't think of anything else. any ideas?
( ascorbate, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 15:47, 2 replies)

Inside of the navel.
Grow some stem cells and clone yourself for extra credit.
( Digeridude Lord Wellington's Beef Trapeze, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 18:36, closed)

we were encouraged
to go to the refectory and get a sample of some of the food to look for pathogenic bacteria.
( sudo is bored, Fri 25 Jul 2008, 13:09, closed)