Reflections:
One of the chapters in our Microbiology textbook discusses how to control microbial growth in the environment. This chapter was so intriguing because it explained numerous ways of how microbial control, whether it is on your hands, the juices and foods we eat and drink, to our actual air. Some methods are filtration, freezing, desiccation, pasteurization, and autoclaving (to name some). Not every substance or object can be degermed the same way. So with this in mind, there also multiple ways to remove microbes (pathogens, viruses, bacteria) since each have a different purpose. For example, since we have bacteria on our skin, we can sanitize (which means to reduce pathogenic microbes) our hands and scrub off the bad bacteria by doing this. Each method has different practical uses which is pretty cool to be aware of and to have a sense of what is appropriate in a sense to "degerm" certain materials and how they are actually sterilized.