 Yeah, everybody, Dr. O here, real quick video, I'm going to compare pour plates and spread plates. So once you've already completed your serial dilutions and you've taken your original sample and diluted it with a series of dilutions, why it's called serial dilutions. There are two things you can actually do with those samples before you inoculate them or incubate them and then do your colony counts. So the first is the pour plate method, the second is a spread plate method. So I use the pour plate method almost all the time. So I like to add and do my dilutions right in the molten agar, not molten anymore, it's cooling, but it's still liquid, in the liquid agar and then mix it up really well and then pour the entire sample right into a sterile plate. So that's the pour plate method. So you start with your warm agar, you add your bacterial sample, mix it up really good and then you pour the entire sample onto a plate then you kind of swirl it around. I always like to think of like a fancy party with a wine glass or something. You swirl it around until the entire, without splashing until the entire bottom of the plate is covered and then you'll incubate that and the cool thing about that is you're actually growing these colonies in this growth surface instead of just spreading it on the top. So that's the pour plate method and the one that I prefer to use. We use this when we're doing true serial dilutions, we also use this when we're doing pure culture techniques and we just want to spread bacteria out enough or dilute them enough where we can see individual isolated colonies well. So I really like the pour plate method. All right, but there is a spread plate method. So instead of doing that, you would take your sample out of that test tube of a broth and you would actually pour that onto the surface of an already solid growth medium. So you'd already have a plate made, you'd put a certain amount of the .1 milliliters of the sample right on the plate and then you would spread it. So usually when we put microbes right on a plate, we're using a streak plate method to spread them around. But in this case, you're going to use this L shaped glass spreader and you're just going to put a coating of it on the surface, let it grow and do your colony counts and your colony forming units from there. So that is the pour plate method and the spread plate method which are both used as a part of the serial dilution process. Okay, I hope it helps. If you haven't seen that video, go back and watch it because that's the really important part. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.