Life Science Club

In the Shoes of a Life Science Club Member

At the CCA Fair
I walked around the CCA fair in the first week of school and was at a loss as to which CCA to choose. They all looked so fascinating. The Life Science Club booth caught my eye. When my friends and I approached the seniors at the booth, they told us about the interesting projects and experiments they had carried out. This really piqued my curiosity. As I am a science-lover, I thought that this CCA will be able to bring out my passion for science. I decided to join the club as my main CCA.

Taking Our First Steps
During my first Life Science meeting, our teacher started by giving us a tour of the Life Science Lab. Being starry-eyed Secondary 1s, we were amazed to see all the different equipment and were eager to get started on our experiment. However, we had to be guided in some simple experiments that involved agar as were not familiar with the process.

Getting To Business
A few weeks later, we started to discuss about the topic that we wanted to work on for the NEA CASP Environmental competition and came up with ‘Green Food and Green Fuel’. We decided on this project as we always see rotten fruits being thrown away in markets. It seems such a terrible waste. For the next few sessions, we did some research for more information and came up with a hypothesis. We believed that these fruits could be used to produce substances that could in turn be used in our daily lives. For example, the bio-ethanol that is produced from waste fruits can be used as a fuel for car whilst the mushrooms produced can be eaten.

First, we started by collecting waste fruits from nearby supermarkets, blended them and put them into bags. This was a bit difficult as we had to lug all the fruits back to school. Eventually, our hard work paid off as within a month, mycelium (fungi) had colonized the entire bag. We were ecstatic to see the results. After that, the fungi were left in a mushroom house outside the Life Science Lab. It will be great if people help to spray the mushroom bags with water whenever they walk past it, as these mushrooms need a cool environment to grow well in. The mushrooms will then be exhibited in its mushroom house during the Enviro-Life Science Symposium.

As for bio-ethanol, we obtained it using a similar way. After the waste fruits were blended, we distilled it through fractional distillation. This was an extremely complex process and the yield was very low. We are hoping that there will be some breakthrough in production levels.

On Competition Day
The competition day came. While waiting for our turn, we were so nervous that we were shaking quite a bit. We then decided to use the time wisely and rehearsed a few more times to prepare ourselves. Finally, when our turn came, all the teachers and pupils did a cheer to boost our confidence. During the presentation time, everything went smoothly for us. We were glad that none of us made any mistakes and despite our nervousness, we did better than expected. Looking at the judges nodding consistently in approval, we became even more confident. One of the judges was so impressed with our mushrooms that he commented that we could set up our own Dunman Mushroom Farm!

Through this wonderful experience, we are sure that we will be able to do even better next time if we were to enter another competition. We can hardly wait for the next school year to begin.

Written by:
Simone Tan Hwee Boon (1A ’09)