Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

We will be doing the How to Disinfect Contaminated Water experiment and have a few questions:
1. The experiment calls for 3 packages of 12 medicine droppers totaling 36. If doing the experiment three times you will only need 12 droppers. Is that a typo error?
2. When sterilizing do you boil the medicine droppers with the rubber part on them?
3. During the procedure it states to "get a clean medicine dropper and attach a bulb to the top". What is the bulb? It is not listed under Materials and Equipment.
Thank you.

Hi rbizzi,

1. It seems that you'll need 4 droppers per experiment if you reuse them, so 1 package should suffice; however, in case you break some I'd recommend purchasing 2 packages.
2-3. The "bulb" is the rubber part you're referring to, and you don't need to boil it.


Peter S.