Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi Im planning to do a project on EM, Effective microorganism

Here's a brief overview of what EM is;

Effective Microorganisms (EM), a culture of coexisting beneficial
microorganism predominantly consisting of lactic acid bacteria,
photosynthetic bacteria, yeast, fermenting fungi and actinomycetes
that are claimed to enhance microbial turnover in soil and thus
known increase soil macronutrients and increases plant growth and
yield. and treatment of sewages or effluents. In the present study
the EM formulation was evaluated for reduction of of Alkalinity, Total
dissolved solids, Biological oxygen demand, and Chemical oxygen
demand of domestic sewage under standard condition. All the
parameters that were tested showed distinct reduction. But total
hetrototropic bacterial and yeast population was increased. No
change in fungal and actinomycetes population was recorded.The
result of the experiment shows that EM has the potential to improve
the effectiveness of treatment of domestic wastes.
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yeah so Im planning to do a science experiment with this EM (which you can buy it easily) and see the effects of EM on sludge water.

can anybody help me on this? I have a lot of questions and i need help developing my procedure.. I am looking for a mentor.. If you know anybody that can help me and answer some of my questions, that would be awesome. We don't even have to meet in person. email would work perfectly . Anyone in microbiology or anything similar..


I wanted to measure Biological oxygen demand and Chemical oxygen demand, Total dissolved solids, alkalinity of the treated water but I would need a lab to work in.. and Im having trouble looking for a lab.. could anybody give me advice on it? (I live in Rancho Palos Verdes, which is near LA. )

Thank you so much for you help!!

Hi Silvia,

Using a microbial clean-up crew for polluted water is really a great idea and one that is very important in countries where supplies of clean water are not always available.

Scibuddies can act as your online mentor to answer specific questions about your hypothesis, variables and experimental methods, but as you say these experiments need to be done in a microbiology lab. Since you are near LA, you could call the microbiology and environmental engineering departments of UCLA and see if there is someone willing to let you work in their lab under supervision

If you haven’t already done so, read the scibuddies article on how to connect with a mentor: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... tors.shtml

There are a lot of details about your project that need to be worked out. First you need to state your hypothesis clearly along with providing the background why you think using EM to clean up ‘sludge water’ is a good idea. Then you need to decide how you are going to test your hypothesis—identify your independent and dependent variables, decide what experiments to do with sufficient numbers of tests to allow statistical analysis, and lastly describe the methods in detail. You need to develop this project plan, like a business model, before you approach a potential mentor. If the professor sees that you have already put a lot of effort into the proposal and understand clearly what you will be doing and why, they will be much more likely to accept you as a student.

Keep posting and we will guide you in developing your project and finding a lab to do it in.

Good luck!

Sybee

Hi Silvia,

SciB gave you some excellent advice, and I think your project idea is really cool and relevant! At UCLA, perhaps you can try contacting Prof. Shaily Mahendra--she does a lot of work on bacterial interactions with chemical contaminants and how that relates to biodegradation and environmental cleanups! The link to her profile is here: http://www.cee.ucla.edu/faculty/mahendra/profile. I think she and her lab will be excellent people with whom to share your ideas, and perhaps you can contact them and see if they are willing to help you out with your project. If not, you can always ask them to see if they know of any other labs in the LA area that work on environmental microbiology that you could potentially contact. Of course, as SciB mentioned, if you have any questions, Science Buddies will be able to serve as your online mentor on this forum, so feel free to post back if you have any other questions!

Best of luck,
Connie