Identifying and Culturing Bacteria

[Steph]

Hi, I am currently a high school student beginning my research on my science fair project concerning identifying and culturing bacteria. I will be purchasing the agar in the Petri dishes in which I will culture my bacteria. This experiment will be conducted in a high school laboratory setting, and I am currently looking for a protocol for identifying and culturing bacteria under these circumstances. Help on finding a simple yet effective protocol and extra hints (and things to watch out for) will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Sincerely,

Steph

[tsham12]

Hi Steph,
If you're looking for something simple, there is this simple petri dish experiment I did in middle school. We took a cotton swab and just swiped our cheeks, hands, railings, or anything we could find. Remember to use a seperate cotton swab for each thing you are going to swab. After we swabbed the thing we wanted, we swabbed the petri dish lightly. Bacteria should be growing there soon. In order to identify the bacteria though I suppose you can google pictures, or look in bacteria books.

Bacteria grows at a really fast rate so I recommend having bleach nearby so you can kill of any bacteria that is growing too fast. Some bacterica can be dangerous as well so try to identify the bacteria that is growing there early enough so you can research any information about it. I recommend keeping the petri dish closed almost all the time because there is bacteria in the air as well and it can affect your data.

Here is a sample of the kind of experiment I'm talking about:
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000165

-Let me know if you want anything more complex or any additional information! Good luck!

[soundwave990]

hey steph

i found this site regarding info in how to culture bacteria with agar

there are maybe some numerous instructions regarding how to conduct your experiment.

check this pdf file out
http://www.aai.org/committees/education ... stesen.pdf