How Clean Is Your Countertop?

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective in this project was to find out how the five following counter tops rate against each other in terms of bacterial growth after food preparation: Quartz, Formica, Granite, Corian and Ceramic Tile. Methods/Materials In this project I used the following materials; swabs, an incubator, 20 petri dishes, agar, different types of meat, bleach, the five counter tops and a ruler. I first bleached the counter tops and took samples from all of them to serve as a control. I then rubbed meat on the counter tops, wiped it with a sponge like a person might and took another sample from each counter top. I had three trials in this project and I used a different type of meat each time to serve as a control. Results I found that Corian was the dirtiest, followed by Ceramic Tile, Formica, Granite, and Quartz. Conclusions/Discussion I found that the more porous counter tops were the dirtier ones and the more dense and less porous ones were much cleaner.

Competition history

• CSEF 2009 Product Science (Biological) (Junior Division Only) · Entry J2109

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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