Baby Food
Example Experiment from a Website I Found (Similar To Mine)
Baby Food
Baby food can be purchased for less than a dollar at a grocery store. It makes a great test subject; however, make sure you use the same sized jar and food type when conducting multiple experiments.
Test bacteria on any surface with the Surface Microbes Science Fair Projects Kit: after hand sanitizer, hands, disinfectant for example. You can use antibiotics to test the bacteria too.
Anytime you want to test how many bacteria are On Top of a surface like a desk, skin, chicken, computer keyboard, bread dough, a hard piece of chocolate, cheese, inside of an animal's cheek, etc. then use the surface experimenter kit. The kit will let you calculate how many bacteria there are per unit surface area on the object. You can also test for e-coli, however, only the microbe water kit will let you distinguish e. coli from other coli forms and bacteria.
Objectives/Goals
Unlike adults, baby’s immune systems are unable to fight off harmful bacteria. The mouth is the most common way bacteria enters their immune system. I was wondering if baby food would become unusable if left out on the counter, and if so, how long it would take for the food to go bad. I wanted to know this because I see parents reuse baby food all the time; sometimes they put it in the refrigerator and sometimes they don't depending on what's convenient. I hypothesized that refrigeration would decrease the bacteria on the baby food and that the beef type would have the most growth. I also thought that as the time increased so would the amount of bacteria.
Methods/Materials
I tested this problem by taking 4 types of baby food, beef, fruit, vegetable, and juice that had been left out over a period of time (5 different intervals). Half my tests were refrigerated and half were left on the counter in room temperature. I then inoculated a small sample of baby food onto a blood agar plate and incubated the plates for 48 hours at 38
Baby Food
Baby food can be purchased for less than a dollar at a grocery store. It makes a great test subject; however, make sure you use the same sized jar and food type when conducting multiple experiments.
Test bacteria on any surface with the Surface Microbes Science Fair Projects Kit: after hand sanitizer, hands, disinfectant for example. You can use antibiotics to test the bacteria too.
Anytime you want to test how many bacteria are On Top of a surface like a desk, skin, chicken, computer keyboard, bread dough, a hard piece of chocolate, cheese, inside of an animal's cheek, etc. then use the surface experimenter kit. The kit will let you calculate how many bacteria there are per unit surface area on the object. You can also test for e-coli, however, only the microbe water kit will let you distinguish e. coli from other coli forms and bacteria.
Objectives/Goals
Unlike adults, baby’s immune systems are unable to fight off harmful bacteria. The mouth is the most common way bacteria enters their immune system. I was wondering if baby food would become unusable if left out on the counter, and if so, how long it would take for the food to go bad. I wanted to know this because I see parents reuse baby food all the time; sometimes they put it in the refrigerator and sometimes they don't depending on what's convenient. I hypothesized that refrigeration would decrease the bacteria on the baby food and that the beef type would have the most growth. I also thought that as the time increased so would the amount of bacteria.
Methods/Materials
I tested this problem by taking 4 types of baby food, beef, fruit, vegetable, and juice that had been left out over a period of time (5 different intervals). Half my tests were refrigerated and half were left on the counter in room temperature. I then inoculated a small sample of baby food onto a blood agar plate and incubated the plates for 48 hours at 38