fairfolio
Saved Projects

Bacteria in the Cafeteria

CSEF · 2006 Microbiology

Miranda M. Weatherly · San Juan Elementary School, San Juan Bautista

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to determine which surface in my school cafeteria had the most bacteria. Methods/Materials I used sterile swabs to to take samples from the each of the various surfaces in the cafeteria and then rubbed each swab in a petri dish with agar and covered the dish and labeled it. I checked the samples for growth on a weekly basis. I then took the petri dishes to a lab to get help in determining what was growing in them. Results The results were that there was a lot of mold growth (acremonium and mucor) in the petri dishes and very little bacteria. Conclusions/Discussion My hypothesis was incorrect. There was very little bacteria growing in the petri dishes. Instead, mold was the most common growth found. There was very little bacteria growth on the surfaces because of the cleaning agents that are used in the cafeteria that contain alcohol and bleach. These agents do not kill molds. I learned that the janitors would have to use an antimicrobial cleaner to get rid of the mold.

Summary statement

Is there bacteria growing on the surfaces of my school cafeteria?

Help received

Used lab equipment at TEKnova, under the supervision of one of their scientists.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2006 Microbiology · Entry J1334

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google