Culturing algae. A guide for schools and colleges

"There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying the little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible." — Samuel Johnson. We have received an increasing number of enquiries from students and staff of schools and colleges who want to maintain algae in culture and carry out projects involving simple growth experiments using them. There are books setting out to help the more advanced worker in this field, but there seems to be no published information for the inexperienced worker who has no contact with people skilled in the techniques involved. We have written this guide with such students in mind. Successful work with algal cultures needs patience, care and skill (plus some luck!) and it must be stressed that any experiment decided upon should not be too ambitious in scope. If kept as simple as possible, there is much more likelihood of positive and meaningful results being obtained. Bacteriological methods are in many ways similar to those for algal cultures. Advice from a bacteriologist on handling cultures would be helpful, remembering that algae differ from bacteria in growing far more slowly and in needing light for photosynthesis.