Stories @ TCC

WAVY Exposes Dirty Cars with TCC Help

“Let’s see what invisible stuff is really hanging out in our everyday cars,” says WAVY-10 news reporter Stephanie Harris, as she prepares her story on how “unclean” most cars tend to be, sometimes even after a standard commercial cleaning.

The station settled on the story after finding TCC’s newest lab, a willing professor and students to do empirical testing and analysis. Along with Dean Greg Frank, science instructor Dale Horeth oversaw biological sampling by gloved students who swabbed areas in the car including seats, child’s car seat, steering wheel and handles.

Two days later, the resulting growth of bacteria in the petri dishes amazed Harris and delighted the biology students and professor. “Hands-on experiments like this are relatively simple to do,” says Frank. “But you never know what you’ll get; sometimes the surface really is ‘clean’ and you get nothing – that’s science.”