Scifest Project

After our venture to the RDS for the Young Scientist competition on Friday, myself, Mia & Clara went into Trinity College to carry out some practical work for the upcoming Scifest event. Our project idea is very similar to the one we prepared for the Young Scientist, in that we still tested various every day items for bacteria, however instead of then testing them for immunity to anti-biotics, we will break them down into different categories of bacteria.
The first part of the experiment which we carried out on Friday afternoon involved taking 60 samples:
20 samples of money
20 samples of money
20 samples of random items, eg Mobile phones & pens.
Once these had been gathered using cotton swabs, we placed the swabs into test tubes containing PBS.
These samples were then spread onto agar dishes & places in an incubator for two days to allow sufficient time for bacteria to grow.
The final part of the project involves counting the number of bacteria on each of the agar dishes & breaking some of the unusual ones down further to see how many different types of bacteria exist on the items.