Cheese Micro Science Fair Projects

Cheese micro science fair projects begins at surface microbiology cheese science fair projects.

PROCEDURES

1. Take the American cheese and cut four pieces, 4.5 cm long, 4.5 cm wide, and 0.5 cm thick.
2. Apply the mold solution with a cotton tipped applicator across one side in both diagonals on all four pieces of cheese.
3. Put one piece of cheese in each zip lock bag.
4. Label the bags by writing the type of cheese and Trial 1, Trial 2 and so on, on all of the bags
5. Close the Zip-locks making sure there is the least amount of air in the bag.
6. Repeat steps 1-6 for the Swiss and Cheddar cheeses
7. After you applied the mold and waited 24 hours, then place a transparent grid sheet 4.5x4.5 cm over the zip lock and color in the mold pattern.
8. Count the amount of squares and then you will know how much the mold has increased.
9. Do this for every 24 hours for one week.
10.Record your information for Swiss, Cheddar, and American on a graphed piece of paper.
11.Record mold growth data on every piece of cheese every day.

RESULTS

The original purpose of this experiment was to discover which cheese (American, Cheddar, and Swiss) would support the most mold growth while in a room temperature cupboard.

The results of the experiment were that Swiss grew the most amount of mold, Cheddar had the second greatest amount, and American had the least amount of mold.

CONCLUSION

My hypothesis was that American cheese will support more mold growth than the other varieties.

The results indicate that this hypothesis should be rejected because American had the least amount of mold and Swiss had the most. Swiss was the cheese that I hypothesized that would support the least amount of mold growth because of the lack of moisture. The reason there was virtually no mold on the American cheese was perhaps there were preservatives in the cheese.

Because of the results of this experiment, I wonder if the American cheese would support more mold than the other varieties without the preservatives. If the cheeses would grow even more mold if I incubated them in warmer area. If the cheese was kept in a cold climate I wonder if the mold would increase or decrease. I wonder if I applied more mold to the cheese if it would grow a lot more mold or would it have stayed the same.

If I were to conduct this project again I would make sure that the American cheese had no preservatives. Try to record data at the same time every day. 3rd party contributor