Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Students in my daughter's 2nd grade class swabbed various items in their classroom and grew samples in agar petri dishes to find which place was the "germiest". We now have lots of growth, but little information on how to identify the items. From research online, it looks like most of the growths are molds, but is there any way to know a bit more from the admittedly poor photos I have attached? Thanks!

Tried to attach small file but kept getting error--Board attachment quota reached--but my file was only 98KB.

Hi there,

Have you checked out this link on Sciences Buddies about how to interpret growth on plates?

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ates.shtml

How are you planning on presenting your data for this experiment? Are you going to count the number of colonies that have grown on the plates? Are you going to report the diversity of organisms growing on the plate (i.e. was there only bacteria, was there only mold, was there both, etc.)? Either way, the link mentioned above should be pretty helpful in those regards, so check it out!

Please let us know if you have anymore questions!

Good luck,
Connie