Geeky Fridge Magnets

In this instructable I will show you how to make refrigerator magnets for the lab geek. Why not decorate the fridge with petri dishes growing molds and bacteria.  Well maybe that is not such a great idea (don't worry, these cute magnets for the fridge don't really contain any cultures).

I work in a lab that does tissue culture and we had some old petri dishes lying around that we no longer were using, so I took a bunch home. I'm still not sure what to do with all of the dishes, though this seemed like a fun way to use some of them.

• Petri dishes - you can pick these up at science supply stores (for example)
• Glue
• Sharpies and paint
• Neodymium magnets
• white paper

Using sterile technique (just kidding) fill the bottom of the petri dish with glue, spread it out evenly to cover the whole plate with equal thickness.   Allow to cool and harden.

I used sharpies to draw the bacteria and mold onto the surface of the glue.  In the first dish I tried to mimic a streak plate.  On the other dish I drew a colony of colourful mold radiating from the centre. 

I had some glow in the dark paint so I dabbed dots of paint onto the surface of the glue so that it looked like bacterial colonies transformed with bioluminescence genes.

For this last dish I wanted it to look like the bacteria was oozing out of the dish so I applied a blob of glue onto the surface as well as over the edge of the dish and then covered it with glow in the dark paint.

Once the dishes were decorated I added white paper to the back of the dish (otherwise you can see the magnet in behind), then glued the magnet on.  For the size of the dish I was using I needed a small neodymium magnet, you may need more than one for larger dishes.