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Soap concentration
Moderators: AmyCowen, kgudger, bfinio, MadelineB, Moderators
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deleted-58328
- Posts: 13
- Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2012 12:49 pm
- Occupation: Student: 8th grade
- Project Question: Antibiotic resistance
- Project Due Date: In a little over a month
- Project Status: I am conducting my research
Soap concentration
For my experiment, i would like to use a triclosan based soap and a alcohol based soap and I'm not sure whether they have to be the same concentration for my experiment? I am testing to see whether bacteria on your hands can become resistant to antibacterial soaps. Thanks!
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deleted-3443
- Posts: 76
- Joined: Wed Nov 26, 2008 3:45 pm
- Occupation: homeschooling parent
- Project Question: n/a
- Project Due Date: n/a
- Project Status: Not applicable
Re: Soap concentration
The soap concentration will be an important decision in your experiment. Obviously, more bacteria will survive an encounter with weaker soap.
You could try several different concentrations of each soap in a "practice run" before deciding what concentration will work best for your final experiment. That means thinking about your experiment and coming up with a definition of what would work best for your purposes.
Do you want the soaps to start out equally effective before testing to see if resistance is built up? Do you want the soap to be a bit weaker than a user might otherwise choose, so that you're sure some bacteria will survive and have a chance of passing resistance on to the next generation? Do you want to watch typical users wash their hands, and use a "commonly used amount of soap?"
Once you have a goal in mind, you can find the soap concentration that meets that goal.
If you don't have time for that, a good default starting point might be whatever the soap package or manufacturer recommends.
You could try several different concentrations of each soap in a "practice run" before deciding what concentration will work best for your final experiment. That means thinking about your experiment and coming up with a definition of what would work best for your purposes.
Do you want the soaps to start out equally effective before testing to see if resistance is built up? Do you want the soap to be a bit weaker than a user might otherwise choose, so that you're sure some bacteria will survive and have a chance of passing resistance on to the next generation? Do you want to watch typical users wash their hands, and use a "commonly used amount of soap?"
Once you have a goal in mind, you can find the soap concentration that meets that goal.
If you don't have time for that, a good default starting point might be whatever the soap package or manufacturer recommends.