Essay On Microbes

THE EFFECT MOIST VS DRY FOOD HAS ON THE AMOUNT OF BACTERIA PICKED UP OFF OF FALLEN FOOD

Lindsey Alexander, Gabby Wnek, Raquel Montoya, and Lauren Burkhart

Introduction

Micro-organisms play a huge part in a human’s life. Microbes are given a bad reputation because they are often known for causing disease, but that is not always the case. Microbes are found on the surface of our skin, in our intestines, and everywhere else. In fact, humans need microbes to survive. Microbes make up more than 60% of the living matter in the world. To put that into perspective, a million microbes could be found in only a teaspoon of soil (“About Microbiology” n.d.).

There are six different kinds of microbes: bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoa, algae, and archaea.

Before beginning the dropping trials, one piece of bread was swabbed with a sterile swab and then transferred to a media plate, and then the same process was followed for a slice of banana. One floor tile was then disinfected using CDC-10 disinfectant. Apply S. Marcescens bacteria were applied using a sterile swab in middle of the floor tile. The first piece of banana was then touched to the bacteria infected floor for one second. The banana was then swabbed on the side that became exposed to the bacteria and then was swabbed onto the media plate. The same floor tile was then disinfected and the bacteria were reapplied. Then, the same process was completed using a piece of bread, completing trial one. The experiment then went through two more trials completing the previous steps with a new piece of banana and bread each time, disinfecting the floor tile in

The data was then recorded into a data table, and the average amount of bacteria for banana and bread were calculated by averaging the three trials. This completed our experiment.

Results

Before dropping the banana and bread onto the floor we recorded the amount of bacteria on fresh banana and bread, results are recorded in Table 1. In the first trial of the experiment the banana and the bread was dropped for five seconds before swabbing for the amount of bacteria that was picked up. After 48 hours of storing the plates at room temperature, the first two trials of dropping the banana on the bacteria contained too many bacteria colonies to count (Figure 1). We decided the bacteria had to many to count because the whole plate was covered with bacteria. Even though we could count the number of colonies for the third trial of the banana, 148 colonies, the average of colonies that were on the banana for all three trails was too many to count (Table 1). The colonies of the bread that were on the plates are recorded in Table 1. The average of the colonies that were counted for the bread was 153 colonies (Table