Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello all,

My high school senior was going to work in a lab and help with fungal research but it fell through at the last minute. She now has to scramble and come up with a home research idea and write a one page proposal by this Friday!

I am helping her, because she just kind of shut down and it will take her a day or so to regroup; but we don't really have that much time. She loves microbiology and we are looking for ideas for bacterial research she can do at home.

It has to be data-driven and not a short term project. It's for an AP bio class she is taking and the research can last until early next year. She must present her findings in May.

Any ideas? We just came up with testing the resistance of common household bacteria to different cleaning agents. But that's hardly an exciting project.

Thanks for any help.

Hi AgentP, I'm sorry this happened, and I'm sure it was a blow to morale. I have an idea off the top of my head, which is something I've done with college freshmen. It is not technically an experiment, though she could probably make it into one.

This involves characterizing a bacteria-eating virus isolated from soil (trust me, they're easy to find), but will require she get a specific (non-pathogenic) bacteria, and have access to an incubator (maybe her school has one?) It will also eventually require access to a lab that will help her use their PCR machine.

If that's of interest, I will get you the protocol so she can write up her initial proposal.
I will also go dig through the freshman lab manual to see if there's anything else that might be workable.

In addition to thinking about the idea LilGreenFrog has suggested, your student might want to look through some of these microbiology projects at Science Buddies to get a sense of what else may be possible, especially if lab access is an issue. (This list is filtered to only show advanced projects.) https://www.sciencebuddies.org/search?v ... crobiology

The "Make It Your Own" tabs also contain suggestions for ways to expand or change the project.... these are not set up to be projects that take months, so she'll need to be thinking about how to tailor the experiment she chooses.

Amy
Science Buddies

Nice, thanks Amy!

Thank you both of you for your suggestions! I stumbled upon the idea of testing spices on bacteria to test for antimicrobal properties.