Welcome to more Spectacular Summer Science, today we’re growing microorganisms
Following on from our hand washing exercise last week we tried another related activity. We boiled some potatoes to destroy any microorganisms already present on the surface and then touched one of them with dirty hands leaving the other untouched.
What would you expect to happen?
Our hypothesis was that micro-organisms from our hands would have been transferred to the potato when we touched it, and so that one should grow more bacteria than the clean potato.
We also added a potato left in the air and one in vinegar to see what would happen.
What you need:
- 2 small potatoes sliced in half
- Boiling water – get an adult to help
- Vinegar
- 4 containers
Instructions
- Boil the potatoes for a few minutes, this is to destroy any microorganisms already present on the skin.
- Carefully remove one potato with a spoon and place into a jar, cover the jar and label it. This is the clean potato.
- Remove another potato but don’t cover this one, we are exposing this potato to the air.
- Remove a third and place in a jar containing vinegar.
- Finally remove the last potato, let it cool enough to hold and then rub it around your hands, before placing in a sealed jar.
Leave the jars on a window sill for a few days and observe and changes.
Results
The potato exposed shrivelled up a little bit, and there is some evidence of micro-organism growth.
The clean potato, ended up quiet slimy, with some possible micro-organism growth.
The dirty potato didn’t seem to have more more evidence of micro-oroganism growth than the clean potato.
The potato kept in vinegar looked mostly unchanged.
Why?
You can see that the vinegar has definitely preserved the potato. This is because vinegar is an acid and microorgansims find it hard to grow in such a hostile environment. That is why we pickle things to make them last longer.
I was hoping to see more growth on the dirty potato, but with science things don’t always work out as you expect. It could be that my jar wasn’t airtight, or it hadn’t been boiled for long enough so there were still some bacteria on the surface.
The healthy schools project has more information about good hygiene.
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Spectacular Summer Science
Week 1
Day 1 – Baking Soda Ice Cubes
Day 2 – Slipping and Sliding
Day 3 – Fun Heart Rate Investigation
Day 4 – Mini Beast Hunt
Day 5 – Pretty Flowers
Week 2
Day 1 – Splatter patterns
Day 2 – Monster Tea Party
What a great experiment. Think the boys would love this but can’t see my husband liking growing germs on his window sill. May try this as an outdoor experiment. Thank you for sharing.