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9/11/2009 3:32 AM

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By Dawn Goodman, Staff writer, dgoodman@observer-reporter.com

This article has been read 407 times.

AVELLA - Erin Rice held a spreader over a flame Tuesday, making sure the scientific tool was sterilized before she used it in an experiment.

Then, the eighth-grader spread salmonella over a container. It was the next step in her experiment about natural selection.

"I think it's a lot of fun," she said. "It's interesting to learn new stuff."

She is one of roughly 70 Avella students using the University of Pittsburgh's mobile lab while it's at the school until Tuesday. The lab, paid for by the National Center for Research Resources, is self-contained and allows students to use current, high-end equipment to perform experiments, said Allison Legg, director of outreach programs for the biology department at the University of Pittsburgh.

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Avella students were using the lab for an experiment about evolution and natural selection, said Brian DiRienzo, Gene Team coordinator. The Gene Team uses the mobile lab to bridge current research with the high school classroom.

When predator and prey meet, some prey do better than others, DiRienzo said. The students are looking at two kinds of salmonella to determine which would do better against amoebas, he said.

"It's pretty interesting," said 10th-grader Troy Midler as he and his science partner, 10th-grader Clayton Rush, injected saline in test tubes before adding salmonella.

What the students find out during their experiments will become part of Pitt research about salmonella, Legg said.

Evy Breitigan, an Avella biology teacher, said she hopes the hands-on lesson helps students realize that science is not something that is dry and only out of a textbook.

"Science is all around these students," she said.

Legg said Pitt has had an outreach program since the early 1990s. The mobile lab allows Pitt faculty to bring more equipment to schools than what they could pack in their trunks, she said. Use of the mobile lab began in January. Though Breitigan has worked with Pitt to bring science lessons to Avella students for several years, this is the first time the mobile lab is at the school.

The mobile lab will be open to the community from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday.

Join the Observer-Reporter's conversation about education at our blog at http://orbehindthedesk.blogspot.com.

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