Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am doing a project on the antibiotic properties of echinecea angustifolia and Echinecea Purpurea on bacterial cultures of E.coli, can someone please help me narrow down my experiment, because I was told that I would need a labortory for this, and I don't have one. And can someone please tell me where to go to ask for help, or to use a labortay I don't know who or where to ask

But if you can help me to make my experiment simplier please reply me
I am going out of time and I haven't done a thing yet ,if even you have have a simplier experiment in mind but based on the same topic I would be glad because I don't have a lab, and I don't know how to get to one
P LEASE
thanks for your help

antibiotic testing of echinecea angustifolia and Echinecea Purpurea .

You can try to mix the materials in ethanol and then dilute the solution to approximately 1% ethanol or less in water or medium prior to treating the bacteria. The problem is that it will be hard to standardize the concentration of your extract. So, one trick is to make up a big batch and use it for all of your experiments. Alternatively, standardize all of the steps in preparing the extract, including the time it takes to make the solutions.

You do not need a lab to do this. Standard procedure is to add the treatment to bacterial medium and then add a standard amount of a growing bacterial culture to the tubes containing the medium. I had a friend who isolated his own E. coli from himself. However, many weakened E. coli lab strains are available.

Thank you very much, thats exactly what I am trying to do,

What is ethanol, where can I get it, and I will also like to ask you what kinds of materials do you think I will need for this experiment, and where can I find E.coli and Echinecea, and how long do you think my experiment will take

What do you mean when you say standardising the concentration?

thank you very much I appreciate your help if even you can only answer some of my questions that would still be very helpful thanks again.

You may obtain ethanol in high concentration in most any high school chemistry lab. However, for this experiment, you may find that asking a responsible adult to obtain drinking alchohol, specifically high proof vodka or my favorite for experimenting, "Everclear". This is typically of good quality for obtaining herbal extracts.

Note that "proof" is the percentage alchohol times two. That is... 80 proof is 40% ethanol. The rest is water and trace ingredients to add flavor... Everclear usually has very little flavoring ingredients.

Please be careful in using ethanol. It is highly flammable... and burns with an almost invisible blue flame. BTW... ethanol is one of the ingredients in cleaner burning gasoline... which tells you how energetically flammable it is!

To make an extract by following or adapting the recipy here:

http://earthnotes.tripod.com/howtoextracts.htm

Or you can buy the extract... as it will already be a water and ethanol base, just dilute it to 1% ethanol before mixing it with the bacterial growth broth or agar.

Good luck !

thanks alot the website really helps, My project is on two species of echinecea, Angustifolia, and Purprea and I am finding the antibiotic properties against E.coli what do you think I would need, and if you have any idea on how to set up my experiment please reply me, thank you.

Where can I find E.coli and Echinecea

How do I distinguish Pupurea from Angustifolia

thanks alot

Have you read up on how to conduct experiments on bacteria? Things you need are similar to growing any animal... food & water. Bacteria need a "growth media". This may be agar plates or broth. Do you have access to Agar or other growth media? What resources do you have available?

Have you thought of how you will measure the effect of the echinecea extract? Will you measure the size of a colony on an agar plate?

Have you gone through the material available on this website on conducting a science fair project?

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentorin ... opic.shtml

What is your hypothesis? What are your variables? This will determine the design of your experiement. There's an expression that says it all, "Constrain the problem, release the solution."

Then... what materials will you need to run that experiment?