Petri dishes
Science was always fun. When we were around 14 we had to put various things in Agar jelly (sp?) in a petri dish, and have a look a week later to see what it had turned into.

We could put what we wanted in - a blade of grass, an eye lash, that kind of thing.

Hayden's petri dish was labelled "spunk" - and it was too. They had to get special cleaners in to scrub the lab down, as this was a potential bio hazard.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 18 Aug 2009, 12:31, 2 replies)

A bit of an over-reaction, no?
Although the following tale apparently happened at my uni before I was there, but was passed on to classes of sunbequent undergraduates as fact. The details are as accurate as I can recall:

Some artsy students decided to do a project using agar plates of differently coloured media; then put these brilliantly tinted dsihes on display. Since they weren't prepared under aspetic conditions, they started to grow whatever had been around (in the air, on their hands, etc) when the grungy art students poured the plates. A passing microbiologist sees their display and becomes concerned when he sees what's growing on certain specific-media. Makes calls. Area cordoned off whilst actual biohazard is carefully removed by special cleaners.

The moral of this story is, you don't need terrorists to get hold of rare strains to cause problems; just culture off some suffiently filthy-bastard students. Oh, and wash your hands from time to time.
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Tue 18 Aug 2009, 15:59, closed)

.
I don't know if spunk is a biohazard or not really. But he didn't manage to grow a baby.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 18 Aug 2009, 17:01, closed)