River, main source of water, needed for every living thing in this world. Human, animals, plant and even small organisms need clean water for healthy life. We had earlier tested the Chicago River with different tests such as Ph, Nitrate, Phosphate, Dissolved Oxygen, Turbidity & etc. In the laboratory, we were actually doing microbiology test as well as learned about bacteria and examine the amount of bacteria exists in the river
Professor Richard Becker had first introduced some information about bacteria, their types, their sizes and etc. Then he explained about the two main lab tests for river water which are Fecal Coliform and Total Coliform. As what has been explained to us, Total Coliform is a large collection of groups of bacteria which is from plants, organisms and other waste. Fecal Coliform is type of total coliform which mainly exists in human waste, i.e. Feces. With all of that information, we began to do our own tests with their instructions. The results that we get are 200 colonies per 100 ml for Fecal Coliform and 2800 colonies per 100 ml for Total Coliform.
From these results, we can actually determine how healthy or unhealthy the river water is. In the future, if several plans have been made to slowly clean the river, we can make another test and compare both results to see whether the plan is effective or not. This microbiology tests had given us a very useful knowledge that we could bring to our respective countries in order to test our own river and making sure that the river is at least suitable for source of fish.
