Bacteria Brushing Science Projects

Experiment with Microbes for Microbiology science fair projects.

The DNA Extraction has assisted many students to win 1st prize at their science fair. Check it out.

Bacteria brushing science projects are very interesting, and a little gross. They generally look at bacteria clusters that can colonize in your mouth or on your toothbrush. These projects are easy to do, as all you will need is a collection of toothbrushes, a microscope, safety equipment and a bacteria culture gel. One of the first bacteria brushing science projects that you can do is a generic bacteria on your toothbrush experiment. For this experiment you will need your toothbrush, a microscope slide and a microscope. The first step is to collect bacteria samples from your toothbrush. To do this simply place a drop of distilled water on your slide and dab your toothbrush bristles in the water. Then look at the slide under the microscope. Do you see anything? To advance this project all you have to do is grow a bacteria culture using the bacteria on your toothbrush.

If you are looking for more advanced bacteria brushing science projects then consider growing bacteria cultures. These cultures can be collected from different people's toothbrushes, or from swabs taken from the inside of different people's mouths or different animals mouths. After growing your bacteria cultures you can examine what type of bacteria are most prevalent.

The best science fair projects for this topic are going to be the most creative. One creative idea, for example, is to see how effective different toothpastes are at killing bacteria. You can set up your experiment to see how normal mouth bacteria react to different brands of toothpaste. In addition to toothpaste, you can also experiment will homeopathic toothpastes used for generations like baking soda and water. Your control for this experiment will be basic water.

If you are interested in how well toothbrushes remove bacteria from the surface of your teeth then you can complete an egg shell experiment. In this experiment you will apply bacteria to the shells of hard boiled eggs and then see which toothbrush designs are the most effective at removing bacteria. You can make this a more advanced project by conducting a variety of experiments like testing the effectiveness of toothpastes along, testing the effectiveness of toothbrushes alone, testing the effectiveness of a toothbrush toothpaste combination and testing the effectiveness of just rinsing with plain water.

The final experiment that you can complete has the largest ick factor involved. One urban myth is that toothbrushes left out in the open in the bathroom can become contaminated with airborne bacteria from fecal matter. This experiment will see if (1) your toothbrush is susceptible to these types of bacteria and/or (2) if storing your toothbrush in different locations and containers helps prevent it from collecting bacteria.

The above ideas will product very interesting microbiology science fair projects and will get the judges' attention!