Bacteria: Friend or Foe- Good or Bad

by Sarah

My topic is bacteria. I chose this topic because I got to work with different materials. Also I thought it was interesting and fun.

Our question was which bacteria grows on MacConkey, EMB, and blood plates? We thought of it when Mr. Sinha and Mr. Sussman from Becton Dickinson came to our class and talked about different plates, loops, gloves, incubators and a whole lot more. They also talked about Becton Dickinson, KIC, and labs all over the world.

We kept a contract journal. That is a journal where we record information or data daily. Lots of people in our class told us a lot of information. Also, Mr. Sinha and Mr. Sussman explained that plates grow bacteria. I found out that the blood in the blood plates was sheep's blood.

The first thing I did to answer my question was to see if bacteria really grows on plates. We found out that bacteria will grow on plates so we put sour milk on a plate and kept it longer. Later we looked under a microscope to see it closer.

We discovered that the blood plate, since it is made from sheep's blood, grew the most bacteria. The EMB plate seemed to grow more mold than bacteria.

I suggest that a future student might choose this topic because it is fun and you can learn a lot. A possible question could be does the effect of sheep's blood cause a different reaction from different bacteria?