Petri dish Christmas ornaments

Is it too early to talk about how much I like these? I hope not.

Please note these are not actual bacteria, but watercolor paintings sealed in resin inside real petri dishes.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: Art and Design • christmas • holidays • ornaments • Science • too soon

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Grey Devil

It’s just not as fun if there isn’t deadly/nasty bacteria trapped within your petri dish ornaments. Where’s the sense of adventure?
hadlockk

It might be too early. Let’s err on the safe side and wait until after Thanksgiving, ok?
haineux

At an MIT art gallery, a conceptual artist asked his or her (sorry, I’ve forgotten the artist) critics to read reviews into a tube connected to a Petri dish filled with growth medium. So their “hot air” containing their own unique bioflora produced interesting patterns growing in the dishes.

I’d probably have a biology major write the little “curator cards” next to the dishes explaining the significance of the patterns.