100 Days of Science #45-- Growing a Germ Farm

We ordered a BioResearch kit from Amazon and thought it would be a fun and quick science experiment to use them all in one day to make a germ farm.  

We put all our Agar plates on a tray, had a bottle of water handy, and brainstormed ideas for things we wanted to swab and test for germs.  

Here are our plates all laid out and ready for us:

We wet down three cotton swabs that came with the kit using bottled water and I set each of the boys in search of something to test.  Evan wanted to see how many germs were in the turtle tank water.

Once his swab was all wet he rolled it on the Agar plate and then made a star with the swab (as the directions in the kit instructed us to do).

Alec tested the stem of our tomato plants.

As we finished up each plate I taped the sides shut and then put a piece of tape across the front and labeled what we had tested.

It is suggested that you put all the plates in an incubator but we don't have one of those so I put our tray in our washroom.  It's a small room and our dryer is always going so it stays nice and warm in there.  I figured it wouldn't hurt that it was a nice dark room too.

We checked on our plates the following afternoon.  With the printed background on our tray it was hard to see our results so we slipped a few pieces of black construction paper underneath.  We were so surprised that some things-- like Ian's fingernails, the doorknob, and the microphone headset for the XBox had little to no germs yet.  But we could already see that the stove top, turtle tank, and shoe treads were full of germs.

We put the tray back in the washroom for another 24 hours and here's what it looked like when we checked on them the next day:

This one actually turned a reddish brown!

While it is not recommended that you leave them longer than 48 hours we did decide to keep our agar plates over the weekend and planned to make up some plates to look at under our microscope on Monday.

Now if you'll excuse me.. I'm off the clean the stove with some pretty heavy duty oven cleaner and I won't be using a sponge this time!

Others in this series:

1. Bernoulli's Principle
2. Ecotarium Trip 
3. Air Molecule Experiment
4. Kitchen Science
5. Corn Maze Field Trip 
6. Birds of Florida 
7. Making Static Music
8. Un-Make It Monday
9. Wind Tunnel Experiment
10. Biomes Field Trip
11. Disappearing Coin Trip
12. Snuffing out a Candle With Baking Soda
13. Making Plastic from Milk
14. Friction Experiment 
15. & 16. Snow Experiments
17. Making an Iceberg
18. Floating Eggs
19. Pond Water Under a Microscope 
20. Planting Eco Plant Pals
21. & 22. Cotton Candy Experiments
23. Springfield Science Museum Trip
24. Signs of Spring
25. Color Changing Slime
26. Growing Our Own Tickle Plants
27. Learning About Soil Sampling
28. Making Bouncy Balls
29. Exploring the Shoreline
30. Color Changing Flowers
31. Roger Williams Zoo Trip
32. Edible Silly Putty 
33. Raising Tadpoles
34. More Microscope Fun 
35.  Homemade Ice Cream
36. How Plants Breathe Experiment 
37. Save The Bay Exploration Center Trip
38. Making Fresh Peach Preserves 
39. Making Solar S'mores
40. Growing a Crystal Garden
41. & 42. Making Jolly Rancher Candy Apples & Lollipops 
43. Volcanic Lemons
44. Oozing Pumpkins

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