What Are the Effects of Different Humidity Levels on Mold Growth?

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective is to prove if humidity really effects mold growth and how it effects it. If it's by making the mold grow faster of making it grow sooner. Hypothesis The higher the humidity the faster the mold will grow will grow to a certain level. Once it has reached a humidity point it will not grow as fast. Methods/Materials 1. Fill pot with water halfway of height of agar containers; 2. Put pot on range and put on medium heat wait until it is boiling; 3. Put Agar containers in with caps off and wait until it is melted; 4. When agar is melted gets your Petri dishes and pours evenly into the dishes; 5. Wait until agar has hardened and when ready get your cotton swabs and you test tubes filled with rhizopus; 6. innoculate the dishes; 7. When you finish with all thirty-six put them in their corresponding boxes. Six to each box and close the boxes; 8. Quickly grab the towels and soak them thoroughly. Pick towels that soak approximately 400 ml; 9. Put towels in each of the boxes except for one; 10. In each box put a thermometer and a hot pad; 11.Each 12 hours record mold growth, temperature, and humidity with hygrometer; 12. After growth dispose dishes. Results The box with an average humidity of 97% started growing at 48 hours and at 108 hours all specimens reached 100% coverage. The box with and average humidity 88% specimens started growing 60 hours and at 132 hours all the specimens reached 100% . The box with an average humidity of 80% started growing 84 hours and at 156 hours the specimens all reached 100 % coverage. The box with an average humidity of 68% the specimens started growing at 84 hours and at 168 hours the specimens reached 100% coverage.the box with an average humidity of 55% the specimens started growing at 96 hours and reached 100% coverage at 180 hours. The box with an average humidity of 38% the specimens started growing at 108 hours and reached 100% coverage at 192 hours. Conclusions/Discussion Knowing information about mold can be useful because there is wide variety of mold species that can be dangerous to a human being. If you know how it grows you can prevent it. Humidity was the variable that I was testing and plays a major growth in mold growth. The higher the humidity the faster the mold grows which was my hypothesis. But it really effects how soon it#s starts to grow rather than how fast the mold grows.

Awards (1)

• Category Award

Competition history

• CSEF 2006 Microbiology · Entry J1307

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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