Let's Do Science with Ponies!

[brighteyes]

The mold thread and sun fading thread have made me think that it would be fun to do experiments to test factors that affect plastic breakdown.  Can exposure to UV light accelerate the formation of pony cancer or plasticizer break down?

I remember that BlackCurtains performed extensive experiments regarding pindot and pony cancer, which were awesome (MLP Preservation Project Website has linkies to them http://www.mlppreservationproject.com/goals.html)! I'd really like to build on that.  I work at a microbiology lab and have access to some equipment that can help including UV-C lights, mold cultures, incubators and digital microscopes that will

One of the questions I would like to address is whether or not mold can stain ponies.  MiRaja recently discussed mold in a few threads and I absolutely agree that mold doesn't want to grow in plastic due to the lack of nutrients.  However, if the pony is perforated with dirt or has grease or other organics that have permeated the pores, I do think it is possible that mold would grow.  A few years ago the air conditioning unit in our building had to be repaired and it became very humid in the lab as it is in the basement.  At this time we had a tremendous growth of mold on the walls where people put their hands and left oils behind for the mold to feed on.  It was so gross!  We also have had issues in our old walk in cold room with mold covering every surface including test tube caps, plastic test tube racks and causing stains that remain even after the racks were washed multiple times.  Given these experiences, I wonder if there could be some cases where mold could infect ponies and cause staining? 

So here are the experiments I propose to do.  Please let me know what you think and if there are any you'd like me to try.

Can Mold Infect Ponies and Cause Staining?

• Experimental Subjects: I will obtain dirty musty smelling fakies from a seller at the flea market who has very dirty ponies.  I will also use cleaned bait fakies or common ponies. I will take one clean fakie and lightly rub oil on it with a sterile swab to simulate greasy, well handled ponies.  All subjects will be photographed thoroughly prior to experimentation
• I will try to culture a mold from the dirty musty smelling fakie by swabbing it with a sterile cotton swab and swabbing it on a petri dish of mold growth medium.  This will help find if there are molds actually growing on the ponies that are dirty.
• If mold is cultured from the fakie I will make a saline suspension of the culture and then swab this all over a different dirty fakie, a clean fakie and an oily fakie.  These ponies will each be put in a sterile beaker covered with sterile foil to prevent outside contamination. If mold cannot be cultured from the fakie, I will use one of the lab's stock cultures of Aspergillis, Rhizopus or Penicillium (which is an incredibly common environmental mold, even though it is commonly thought of as only bread mold)
• Observe the ponies over the course of a month to see if mold growth is evident
• After one month, the ponies will be cleaned and photographed to observe if there has been any staining.
  

UV Component of Sun fading

• Obtain several bait ponies and fakies
• Remove the heads and clean them thoroughly.  Make a highlighter mark and pen mark on head of each.  Expose heads to UV-C light for one hour and leave heads on bench.
• Take a photo of head and body every fifteen minutes.  Examine results to determine effectiveness of UV light at sunfading.  If no result expose longer than 1 hour.

UV Effect on Plastic Breakdown

• Obtain several bait ponies with cancer, regrind and plasticizer breakdown related hardness
• Remove the heads and clean them thoroughly.  Expose bodies to UV-C light for four hours and leave heads on bench.
• Take a photo of head and body every thirty minutes.  Examine results to determine effect of UV light on plastic softness and cancer spots. Then leave heads in UV light overnight and examine differences in the morning.

I also plan to take slices of cancer, regrind, pin dot and the ponies from the mold experiment (if I can get any to grow mold) and examine them under the microscope and take pictures.  I don't think the mold will readily grow on any of the ponies except the one that has oil and maybe the one that is dirty as it may make use of nutrients found in the dirt.  I do think I will be able to culture mold from the ponies, but I don't think that this is an indication in and of itself that mold will infect ponies as mold spores are everywhere, even on lab bench tops where there is obviously no active mold growth.  Even so, in these cases I think that the mold will still not cause staining as seen in pony cancer or pin dot.  Regardless of my expected outcome though, I think it will be a neat experiment.  The UV ones will be neat too. I will post the results here and on a special page on my pony blog.  After testing mold I want to do the same experiments but with bacteria.

So, what do you think?  Can anyone think of anything else I should try or modifications to these experiments?

[Gizmo]

I'm very interested in seeing the outcome of the UV Component of sun fading and effect on plastic breakdown, this is going to be very helpful and it would be great to see it tested on different colors especially whites and paler shades where yellowing and mold is most noticeable.

[hathorcat]

I posted in the other thread about UVC

However I think all of these are going to be fascinating to find out the results of! Brilliant to have other information and more details. I am really excited to find out!

[BabiChuld]

Fascinating topic, I look forward to your conclusions! 

[ponyqueen]

Oh my gosh I love science! I am a wildlife biologist by training, so my education was lots of science-y courses. So not to highjack this thread, but as such I have a sunfading experiment underway that I am going to start a thread for, but to give you an idea...

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One control and two others in different ratios of H2O2 and water.

So glad to hear we have more pony-ologists in the Arena!

[PinkiePosh]

This is all really fascinating!
Bill Neigh the science pony

[Al-1701]

This is all really fascinating!
Bill Neigh the science pony

They need to get him the on show.  They got Weird Al, we need Bill.

I'm interested in the outcome for scientific curiosity.  Though, I wonder if the fakie plastic is a good experimental substitute for real ponies.  I know they're perfect lab fodder, but accuracy is key.