User talk:Professor ivor cox

Streaking technique known as "phallic streaking"
In 1976, Professor Ivor Cox from Amsterdam University proposed that when streaking agar, there was a new effective technique to successfully grow cultures in a petri dish. The method is simple, starting at the lower end of your dish, swab the culture that you are using in a wave shape or as a "3" shape. This allows the cultures a better surface area over the agar, and as we know the larger the surface area the better the volume. From there, then take the swab and draw a number 11, starting from the middle of your newly drawn 3. By doing so, we can see that the cultures in the 3 will grow as a larger size, but the cultures grown in the 11 will grow in greater numbers. The final part of this simple streaking technique is to draw a D or, to give its technical term, the "helmet". By doing so, above the 11, we can see whether the cultures more likely to grow in the "helmet" are more likely to grow successfully. This technique works particularly well in blood agar. Some people have criticized this technique, often arguing that the streaking is not of an efficient size, but as we have seen from successful experiments, the size is irrelevant.

In order to successfully grow the cultures, make sure that after sealing the dish you move the petri dish in a circular motion, making sure that you have a firm wrist action. It is important to note that you MUST NOT seal the petri dish all the way around, as this can cause fermentation, the result of which can produce unwanted "cheese-like" fungi.