Boys vs. Girls: Who Is Dirtier?

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to find out who had more bacteria on their hands sixth grade boys or sixth grade girls. Methods/Materials I chose fourteen 6th grade boys and fourteen 6th grade girls to test how much bacteria was on their hands. My first step was getting sterile swabs and spraying distilled water over the swab and then wiping the students index finger on their left hand. Then I inoculated the sterile petri dishes with the agar in it, for each students finger I swabbed. Then I quickly closed the lid to each petri dish so that no extra bacteria would be trapped inside. I did this for each student. Finally I observed and documented with photos the bacterial growth on the individual petri dishes for seven days. Results After seven days of growing bacteria, the ending result was that the petri dishes for the boys grew in twelve dishes and in the girls it was only eleven. Out of fourteen boys eighty-six percent grew bacteria and out of fourteen girls seventy-nine percent grew bacteria. Conclusions/Discussion The conclusion to my experiment proves the sixth grade boys had more bacteria on their hands than the sixth grade girls. The number of petri dishes for the boys that grew bacteria was greater that the petri dishes of the girls. My experiment proved that sixth grade boys are dirtier than sixth grade girls.

Competition history

• CSEF 2009 Microbiology · Entry J1708

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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