how to make a bacterial smear once again you'll need your bunson burner it is your friend this quarter using it every day get your perfect flame and then what you're going to do is put a one drop of water on your slide before I do that I'm going to put a label on these are in your drawer notice I have my initials the bacteria in this case it's staff orius the date and my group number go ahead and fix that to your slide before you even start sterilize the loop then these little beakers are in your drawer you can get a little bit of water see how hot that was kind of mix it up in there till I get can you see that I have a droplet of water on there I'm going to just re reach in to make sure none of that evaporated and then just one drop on the slide like so is going to be adequate you do not want too much water because as you'll see you have to wait for your slide to completely dry before you can heat fix it I'm going to be taking my test tube and again I have the slant facing up remove the lid Flame the mouth of the lid notice that I have the test tube but this angle that's the best way to prevent dust from falling in you don't want it too high like this you don't want it too low like that if there's liquid in it it will drip out I'm going to touch down to make sure the loop is cool and then touch another place to pick up live bacterial cells you might not see anything on your Loop and that is okay this is a process of Faith now I'm going to swirl the bacteria oo that was big plump because there was too much of it I'm spreading it out then flame this off remember I'm talking during these processes as I'm teaching you but when you're doing your actual transfers don't speak during any of the smear making or anything like that because you'll just increase the probability of contamination so this smear is a little bit too thick but what we'll do is we'll come back and we'll show you a dried one and then how to heat fix them