Profile

I currently live in central Scotland in a place called Falkirk, which is in between Edinburgh and Glasgow. I live with my dog who is a 1 year old cocker spaniel and keeps me on my toes. I enjoy science, photography and travelling.

As this is the water zone I shall focus on my position as a Microbiologist at Scottish Water.

My job was to test different types of water such as tap water from houses, swimming pool water, lake water and river water for certain types of bacteria that could cause sickness.

I also tested samples from waste water treatment facilities during the different stages of treatment which were often rather smelly.

To detect or find the bacteria i used special petri dishes with different kinds of agar – a sort of jelly looking food source which the bacteria eats to grow. different kinds of agar can grow different bacteria and grow in different colours. This can help microbiologists figure out what is growing in that sample.

 A typical day would consist of arriving to laboratory and performing morning set up, this would involve using a special program to make sure that all incubators were working overnight. These are like fridges but hot which allows bacteria to grow.

I would then getting all the equipment I would need for that day and make sure that they were working and had no faults of broken parts.

I would then analyse samples from the day before to see if any bacteria had grown overnight and log results onto computer. sometimes i would need to phone public health if bad bacteria were found in tap water.

I would then spnt some time reporting results and looking under a microscope to look for different types of algae. this is a single cell microorganism that lives in water

Once all the previous nights samples had been looked at i would then collect new samples and filter the water through a device which traps bacteria onto a paper like membrane which once placed onto petri dishes with agar allows bacteria to grow.