Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello!

I am in 11th grade and i am currently taking an AP biology class at my high school. We have to perform an experiment for a year project. I wanted to do my project on Growing Bacteria by using agar petri dishes or plates. I am going to take samples either public or household places where bacteria grow and culture the bacteria on agar dishes. I wanted to buy some agar dishes for over christmas break to do my experiment. I am also doing this at home. SO any advice would be GREAT! Some questions i have are, what type of agar is for best use with this experiment? that is my main concern and i need to order these asap. Would pre parded petri dishes with agar or making your own be better? I want it to be as simple as it can. Thanks for your time! Hope to hear from you soon

Hi,

If you're going to do this at home (and not in a research lab), it would probably be best to try and order pre-prepared petri dishes. Though you could order just LB powder and make your own petri dishes, it's generally advised to sterilize the LB well before pouring it, and the best way to do this is by autoclaving (which I doubt you have in your house).

As far as the types of media go, LB agar plates are pretty standard and would work plenty well for culturing household bacteria (your main concern will be keeping it sterile, except for what you add to it). Most likely your AP Bio teacher will have access to LB plates.

Hope this helps!
Aaron Lin

hi

it is almost impossible to do such a thing in house. (when we did it in our school we always had seen fungi instead of bacteria).
nutrient agar can be a good choice because verity of bacteria can grow in it.
i think you dont have enough background about this case. studying is what i can advise right now. what i did for my project i first studied first 11 part of jawetz microbiology.

best wishes
kamran banan

hi

it is almost impossible to do such a thing at home. (when we did it in our school we always had seen fungi instead of bacteria).
nutrient agar can be a good choice because verity of bacteria can grow in it.
i think you dont have enough background about this case. studying is what i can advise right now. what i did for my project was studying first 11 part of jawetz microbiology.

best wishes
kamran banan

Science buddies has a nice page about all the different types of agar
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... Agar.shtml

Kamran is right that growing agar plates that outside of a lab (and even in some lab environments) it can be difficult to avoid contamination. There are spores and bacteria in the air that can get onto the media and grow particularly in damp, warm climates. But some degree of contamination may be ok depending on your goal for growing and measuring growth. If your aim is to see overall differences in quantity/amount of microorganisms between different surfaces then maybe it doesn't matter.

What kind of project are you thinking of testing by growing bacteria? Do you have a hypothesis? There are some project suggestions
here to help get you started ...
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... a=MicroBio

Best of luck,
Caroline