Bacterial Contaminants Science Fair Projects

Bacteria

You do not have to buy bacteria cultures. You can harvest bacteria from nearly any surface in your home or at your school.

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 this experiment was to determine if there are any bacterial contaminants growing in self serve ice dispensers at fast food restaurants. The hypothesis was that there will be none or insignificant traces of harmful bacteria that are not enough to cause diseases. The Eosin Methylene Blue (EMB) medium was used to help determine specific gram negative bacteria that can cause harmful diseases. Samples from five fast food restaurants were collected over a two week period.

A total of 60 samples were collected. There was evidence that showed bacterial growth in all of the restaurants tested. The findings from these restaurants were consistent with the hypothesis in which the small amount of bacterial growth was not significant enough to cause harmful diseases to the consumers. Even though the amount of bacteria was small, it could signify a serious problem if the restaurant does not take measures to prevent future bacterial outbreaks. These outbreaks could be prevented by the restaurant#s employees adhering to proper cleaning procedures of all equipments. Both the restaurant employees and the consumer should employ proper hand washing techniques to prevent diseases. 3rd party contributor