​Anjali Phadke's P​ortfolio

Here at the Dayton Regional STEM School, students are taught that their passions in life are achievable and through good work and determination anything is possible. In most cases, students may not know what they want to in life until the later stages of high school. That is why through 10th grade, our teachers make sure we have experience in all aspects of STEM. This way, we have a better understanding of what we might want to do in college. Personally, I have always wanted to become a pediatrician. Throughout my life, I have done numerous science camps, experienced labs, and have shadowed many doctors further increasing my passion of wanting to become a doctor. But, what about school? How have my experiences this year changed my viewpoints of wanting to become a doctor? Well, throughout all of the experiences this year, I am proud to say my interest in medicine has developed as a result of a passion in scientific literacy in Biology.

The first endeavor I would like to talk about is the Experimental Design Pill Bug Lab. This was the first project we had in Biology and it was the first chance we really had to create a lab report. As a refresher of the project, we had previously learned about the experimental design process before starting this project. The Experimental Design Process is a list of 7 steps that are the ground work for any experiment. The steps are: Identifying the problem, researching, formulating a hypothesis, designing the process to be used to test the hypothesis, carrying out the experimental procedure, analyzing the data and observations, and drawing conclusions. So, groups of around 4-5 conducted an experiment on pill bugs! Our experiment or question for the experiment was “Do Oniscidea prefer perfume or lemon juice?” Now, after all the testing and observations of the pill bugs, we were to write lab reports about this experience. For our lab report, we were graded on the effectiveness and completeness of the individual aspects such as the introduction, the methods, the data, the analysis, and the conclusion. So, the parts of this project were the lab report and the actual project.

Now, the actual evidence for this is the lab report. Because this was one of the first projects of the year, this lab report was the first piece of writing that could’ve had an effect on me. I would like to use the analysis and conclusion as the evidence of the growth. Now, with analysis, we take in the observations and the data from the experiment and talk about the results. One example from my lab report is “According to the data, the majority of the Oniscidea migrated towards the perfume. As the data shows, after 1:30, 7 bugs were in the petri dish for with the perfume and 3 bugs were in the petri dish containing the lemon juice. It could be that the lemon juice was a lot stronger than the perfume so the bugs wanted to move to a place with more air. I would’ve thought that the chemicals in the perfume would steer the bugs away, but I conjecture that the perfume was a lot less strong than the lemon juice.” How does this prove my claim? Well, when I become a doctor, the symptoms become the observations and the data becomes the lab results. The analysis becomes the diagnosis of a patient, a very critical skill needed to be a doctor. Also, because I want to become a pediatrician, I won’t always get to talk to the person with the problems. So, learning to observe for myself and interpreting information for a diagnosis is key. Of course, with being a doctor comes loads of paperwork. So, this part of my lab report shows not only my observation and interpretation skills, but my ability to put it into writing so that I could make sure my ideas were documented. All in all, because this was the first lab report of the year, I was able to immerse myself into the skill of writing lab reports early on in the year!

So, after the first lab report, don’t other lab reports seem repetitive in terms of growth towards an interest about medicine? Well, I see it as perfect practice makes perfect. The more I practice this skill, the more I know how much I want to be a doctor! So, another endeavor I would like to talk about is the second lab report of this year. Like the other lab report, each group completed an experiment before we all wrote about what we did. Our question for this experiment was “What was the victim’s last meal based on the stomach content we were given?” Based on the situation, the independent variable was the stomach content itself and the dependent variable was whether the stomach contents had the presence (or didn’t have the presence) of proteins, glucose, starch, and lipids. We used Benedict’s Solution, Biuret Solution, Sudan III stain, and Iodine to test for these. The situation for the experiment is as follows: There was a murder, and we had to figure out where the victim was the day of the crime. We would be able to figure out where the victim was based on his last meal (which is what we created experiments to test for.)

How does this prove that I want to be a doctor? I would like to use the analysis portion of my lab report as evidence. “The data shows that the stomach contents of the victim tested positive for all of the tests except the Biuret Test for Proteins. This means that there was no protein found in the meal of the Victim. For each test that was positive, the results are discussed below. For the Benedict’s test, the blue solution turned green, indicating that there was glucose in the contents of the stomach. For the Biuret test, there was no change in color indicating that the test was negative. For the Iodine test, the stomach contents turned a deep purple color indicating a positive test result! Finally, the Sudan III stain created a layer of red stained fat indicating that there was indeed fat in the stomach contents!” Now, the difference between this lab report and the previous lab report is that we actually did scientific tests for this experiment. This relates to medicine in a different way because we actually did the tests that medical individuals do. We worked with Benedict’s Solution, Biuret Solution, Sudan III Stain, and the Iodine solution to figure out the last meal of an individual! Although this doesn’t necessarily prove my increased passion of wanting to become a pediatrician, it proves my increased passion in medicine. Like my previous lab report, I was able to take the results of the tests and make an informed decision for the last meal of the individual. I won’t always have to complete the tests myself and create documents about the results of my data as a pediatrician, but if I become a medical lab technician or if I go into the field of research, I will have to be able to document my results. This analysis paragraph shows the practice of my previously learned skill and the documentation of analysis as a result of interpretation of data.

Finally, what about my last endeavor. This experience is arguably the most important one of the year for biology! Science Fair was a very big part of Honors Biology where each person had to come up with a hypothesis, create an experiment for that hypothesis, create a science fair board and finally create a lab report that was around 20 pages long! As an introduction to my science fair project specifically, here is my abstract from my lab report: In the 21st century, we are what we eat. We are pumping our own bodies full of antibiotics to combat gastro-intestinal issues, but rather than hurting the “bad bacteria” that is causing the harm, we obliterate all bacteria, potentially causing future harm to our bodies. In this experiment, I challenged this idea by testing other alternatives (chili powder, oregano flakes, cinnamon, and probiotic yogurt) compared to antibiotics to see if we can combat gastro-intestinal issues (privy to E. coli) by using natural alternatives. I created the question, “What other alternatives to Antibiotics can cause the most inhibition of E. coli?” My hypothesis for this experiment was, if I test other alternatives to Antibiotics, Probiotics will show the most inhibition of E. coli. For the first test that I completed, antibiotics and probiotics showed inhibition. Through culturing the E. coli and testing the alternatives again in a newer format, I found that chili powder (compared to metronidazole) caused the most inhibition.”

Where did the growth come in? Well, as a result of this experiment, my eyes were actually widened. I actually had more of an interest in research! Here is evidence from my lab report: “To reiterate my results, for the first test, both probiotics and antibiotics showed inhibition of E. coli while the oregano and cinnamon did not show any E. coli inhibition. For the second test, chili overall had the highest average score of E. coli inhibition, but the 10% solution of chili yielded the highest score of 5. The next step in this project would be to actually see if the natural alternatives would combat gastro-intestinal problems in human or mice test subjects. To do this, I would first have to test a multitude of microorganisms and herbs before deciding a few on which to test on live subjects. Hopefully future research will help me solve the problem of gastro-intestinal issues with natural alternatives!” This proves my claim because it shows that I have again had practice with analysis and results, but it also shows that I have interests in the continuation of this project! All in all, my passion of wanting to go into medicine has just increased as a result of this year!