Look Who's Coming to Dinner!

Overview

Objectives/Goals One way that diseases can be spread is through unsanitary tables at restaurnats. My project was to see how well local restaurants cleaned there tables and if they could be pathways for spreading diseases. My hypothesis is that out of the restaurants that I commonly eat at, McDonald's tables will have the most bacteria on their tables and thus be most likely to spread diseases. Methods/Materials 40 Petri Dishes, 40 sterile swabs, an incubator, and tape were used to do this project. For each restaurant (McDonald's, Burger King, Popeyes, Chipotle, Kitchen Table, and School Table), I took five samples over the course of five weeks. I incubated each sample for four days and analyzed bacteria by the number of colonies and characteristics. I also made a control group of a blank sterile Petri Dish with no swab on it. I had one of these for every week of samples. Results By taking the mean of bacterial colonies for each restaurant I found that McDonald's had the greatest number of bacterial colonies, followed by Kitchen table, Popeyes, School table, Chipotle, Burger King. Conclusions/Discussion McDonald's samples had the most bacterial colonies with a wide variety of bacteria. My own kitchen table came in second with fewer kinds of bacteria plus, in terms of providing a a pathway for disease, only four people use the table in my house while many more use the table at McDonald's . Overall, my hypothesis was proved correct. Out of the restaurants that I tested McDonald's table was the most unsanitary and thus the most likely to be a pathway for diseases.

Competition history

• CSEF 2012 Microbiology (General) · Entry J1502

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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