Liquids vs Bacteria Science Fair Projects

Liquid ures

Many beverages on the market have been packaged as a health product. However, do these products really improve your health?

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.

Objectives/Goals

The purpose of my science project is to determine if different juices will help my test antibiotics create a larger area of bacterial inhibition than they would have alone. It is commonly believed that green tea, pomegranate juice, grapefruit juice, and cranberry juice are beneficial to your health; for this reason I wanted to see what would happen if I mixed them with penicillin and amoxicillin.

Methods/Materials

For my control I tested the antibiotics and juices individually to determine if they created an area of inhibition around the test dot. To do this I dipped an absorbent test dot in the test liquid and placed it in a petri dish that I swabbed with the bacillus subtilus bacteria. After I completed my control tests I mixed 10 ml of a test antibiotic and 50 ml of a test juice in a seperate perscription container. I repeated the steps I used to test my control liquids to test my mixed liquids. Each test was repeated 11 times for more accurate results. After 48 hrs and 96 hrs I measured the areas of inhibition and documented them in my log book. I had a total of 17 different test substances.

Results

After 48 hrs of incubation all of my mixed test substances had larger areas of inhibition than the control substances. After 96 hrs the mixed test substances still had larger areas of inhibition than the control test substances, however the overall areas of inhibition were decreasing.

Conclusions/Discussion

Through testing I discovered that these juices did help the antibiotics to create a larger area of inhibition. However, through my research I discovered that while these juices have health benefits on their own, they also contribute to negative drug interactions. I feel that further investigation is needed before drinking these juices while taking medications. 3rd party contributor