Bacteria and Temperature Science Fair Project

Test bacteria on any surface with the Surface Microbes Science Fair Projects Kit: after hand sanitizer, hands, disinfectant.. for example. You can use antibiotics to test the bacteria too.

Anytime you want to test how many bacteria are On Top of a surface like a desk, skin, chicken, computer keyboard, bread dough, a hard piece of chocolate, cheese, inside of an animal's cheek, etc. then use the surface experimenter kit. The kit will let you calculate how many bacteria there are per unit surface area on the object. You can also test for e-coli, however, only the microbe water kit will let you distinguish e. coli from other coliforms and bacteria.

Bacteria and Growth

When you are studying the growth of bacteria it is important to remember that there are a lot of factors that influence their growth. Food, moisture, surface texture and temperature can all impact bacterial growth rate. This means that you will need to pay attention to your experiments' designs to ensure you are able to isolate only one growth factor at a time.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of incubation temperature on bacteria growth rate.

I became interested in this idea because I’ve always been fascinated with bacteria and health.

The information gained from this experiment will help society know at what temperature bacteria normally grow, and that knowledge will help determine what temperatures to set appliances like heaters in institutional kitchens, restaurants, and homes.

HYPOTHESIS

My hypothesis was that bacteria will grow best at 37° C because it very close to body temperature.

I based my hypothesis on The Science Encyclopedia Volume 2 that states, “Bacteria grow best between 10* and 40* C” any temperature outside that range will cause most bacteria to die.

EXPERIMENT DESIGN

The constants in this study were:

• Testing procedures
• Incubator, incubator temperature, and humidity
• Equipment type
• Magnifying glass used to view colonies
• Time exposed to the specific temperature
• Light
• Density of the test tubes
• Species of my bacteria

The manipulated variable was the temperature of the incubator.

The responding variable was the number of live colonies after their incubation time.

To measure the responding variable I will count the number of colonies visible to the unaided and aided eye.

MATERIALS

Science Fair Projects Temperature Fluctuations & Bacteria abstract continues here...