Mystery TSA Plates by Shane Hall

Figure 1 – TSA plates before experimentation.

                   

Day 0:

     As seen in Figure 1 above, I divided my plates into four sections for measuring bacterial growth.  Two sections of each plate contained samples from two of my body parts, my arm and my leg.  A third section had a sample taken from the backside of my cell phone and the fourth had a sample where I borrowed some of Emma’s expired lemon juice to study.  Of course, no growth was observed at that time.  Each plate was then incubated at specific temperatures; the plate on the left in Figure 1 was placed at room temperature while the one on the right was incubated at 37 degrees Celsius.  For this experiment, I hypothesized that the lemon juice would produce no growth due to the acidity of the substance and, therefore, its bleak potential for bacterial growth.  I theorized that more growth would occur on the TSA plate kept at room temperature due to the habitat of the bacteria and its possible limited growth.  As for the other sections, I expected to see a decent amount of bacterial growth especially for the cell phone section since I have placed my cell phone on multiple random surfaces without necessarily cleaning the device.

Figure 2- TSA plates after two days of experimentation.

                                      

Day 2:

     After two days of incubation, I was surprised to see hardly any bacterial growth.  As shown above in Figure 2, the TSA plate kept at room temperature is now on the right while the plate incubated at 37 degrees Celsius is on the left.  The only bacteria I observed on the plates was from one small bacterial growth from my arm on the plate kept at 37 degrees Celsius.  I expected this of the lemon juice sample, but I originally thought there would be at least some bacteria on my phone and body sections.  Perhaps the areas were not properly swabbed or the samples not correctly applied to the TSA plates in a manner that would encourage growth.  Of course, there is the possibility that there was not much bacteria to culture from the selected areas.  At least the TSA plate produced slight growth for the sample taken from my arm and I expect it to flourish by the next time my plates are observed.

Figure 3 – TSA plates after seven days of experimentation.

                             

Day 7:

     Miraculously, growth was observed on both plates by the seventh day.  Unfortunately, I did not anticipate where the bacteria would grow all that well.  Observing Figure 3, we see that my room temperature TSA plate has now returned to the left side while my plate incubated at 37 degrees Celsius is back on the right side.  The arm section on my body temperature plate did grow since the last time I saw the bacteria.  It has now become a small bacterial colony since then.  What truly surprised me is the fact the Figure 3 shows that I have received the most growth from lemon juice on both of my plates.  The bacteria appeared to grow more so at room temperature, producing a large colony.  I would almost go so far as to call the bacteria a lawn of growth as opposed to the plate incubated at body temperature which grew to be a mid-sized colony.  In any case, the growth shocked me by far.  

     Despite my hypothesis being incorrect, I was intrigued by the growth and decided to place it underneath a compound microscope to view the bacteria that was cultured.  I did not have a chance to gather any images from the dissecting microscope, unfortunately.  The two photographs below show the bacteria in greater detail (Figure 4 and Figure 5).  The figure on the left (40x magnification) shows a portion of the sample as a whole while the figure on the right (100x magnification) shows the same sample up close and personal.  Figure 6, as seen below, shows a different area of the same sample (100x magnification).  While my arm’s bacteria might be a type of Staphylococcus, I am having trouble identifying the lemon juice bacteria.  Perhaps it is another form of Staphylococcus as well.      

Figure 4 – Lemon juice bacteria at 40x 

magnification.

Figure 5 – Lemon juice bacteria at 100x 

magnification.

                         
                                                             

Figure 6 – Lemon juice bacteria at 100x magnification.

     As seen in the previous photos, bacteria growth is possible on lemon juice.  Though, this is indeed curious as there are several home remedies and methods for killing bacteria using substances such as lemon juice due to its high acidity.  Perhaps the fact that the lemon juice expired somehow changed the composition of the substance and allowed a nice breeding ground for bacteria to thrive.  I also noticed that there was more growth on the room temperature sample than the body temperature sample, signaling me that the bacteria present does not survive at high temperatures and supporting at least one part of my original hypothesis.  Only one other person in my group was able to culture bacteria from their lemon juice, so the inconsistency of our results does not seem to support my hypothesis either.  

     However, I did expect bacterial growth for the sections containing my arm’s bacteria.  Granted the growth was small, it was still present.  Although, no growth was seen on the cell phone or leg sections of my TSA plates.  At this point, I suspect that I am either incredibly good at keeping bacteria off of me and my belongings, or there was some type of application error with the culture swabs.  I found that the sources for collecting bacteria are limitless, however.  This information I have acquired is enough for me to believe that bacteria can truly grow anywhere if the conditions are just right.

Mystery TSA Plate by Karissa Crawford

Day 0: Starting from the upper left hand corner of each petri dish and going in a clockwise direction I swabbed the surface of my phone, my computer mouse pad on my laptop, under my nail, and the power button on microscope #21. I initially predicted that the power button would have the the largest amount of bacteria and the largest variety of bacteria because there are several different people that use the microscope in our lab. I also had an idea that there would be a fairly large amount of bacteria underneath my nails because of coming in contact with many different surfaces, foods and other types of bacteria filled places or things throughout the day. For my phone screen and laptop I thought there would be bacteria similar to under my nail since I am the main person who used my phone and my laptop.

Day 2: After 2 days I only saw growth from the bacteria under my nail in a lawn formation on both the 24°C and 37°C plates of about 170 individual cells and 2,200 individual bacterial cells, respectively. There appears to be growth on the 24°C plate in the microscope power button section of my plate but I had accidentally touched the swab from under my nail in that spot. The denser lawn on the 37°C plate in comparison to the 24°C plate for under my nail make sense because even though my nails are longer since they are acrylics the bacteria growing underneath them would be used to or thrive at temperatures closer to body temperature - 37°C. At this point I wasn't able to distinguish if there were any different types of bacteria from under my nail. I was surprised that there was not any growth in the other three surfaces that I tested.

Day 7: On the final day of observation I could differentiate between 3 different types of bacteria from under my nail on the 37°C plate. One type was more of an orange color and had 2 colonies, the second type was a white/tan color and surrounded the outer edge of the lawn and the last type was the one I initially saw from day 2 and was a darker yellow color. The 24°C plate for under my nail had 2 distinguishable type of bacteria one that was also a white/tan color and surrounded the outer edge of the lawn and the second type was the one I initially saw from day 2 and was a darker yellow color. My phone screen and computer mouse pad from the laptop still did not show any bacterial growth after one week. However the power button from microscope #21 had 1 type of bacteria forming 3 colonies at 24°C (excluding the growth that came from accidentally touching the "under my nail" swab to that section). Finally on the 37°C plate there was the same type of bacteria as the 24°C  plate but with only one colony formed.


Conclusion: Overall I was surprised by my results but also somewhat relieved that the two things I use most often, my phone and my laptop, did not show any growth or I probably would have been pretty grossed out! Under my nails is not much better though, and I did not think there would be THAT much bacteria even though my mom always told me when I was younger to try to wash under my nails too when I washed my hands before eating. I think that since the microscope power button is such a small surface there wasn't bacteria growth and because the bacteria that would be transferred from someone's finger when turning the button on may not be able to survive on that surface and at that temperature in comparison to an environment that it would be accustomed to such as someones hands or fingers. I made several slides of my bacteria from the plates that showed bacterial growth and was not able to obtain any pictures other than what looked like white smears, I was not able to determine the specific types of bacteria on my plates.

Mystery TSA Plate by Karina Yu

Day 0:

In this experiment I wanted to see the bacterial growth from four sources. I wanted to see what bacteria grew in my mouth, under my shoe, on my skin (palm), and in a bottle of expired lemon juice. I took a swab of each source and made duplicate dishes, one was stored at 24°C (room temperature) and the other was stored at 37°C (body temperature). I hypothesized that my mouth would grow a good amount of bacteria because it is a moist, warm environment with nutrients coming in from eating food.

Next, I thought that I would have the most variety of bacteria under my shoe because it has been exposed to many areas of the ground where others have walked on. I could have picked up whatever bacteria was under their shoes. I figured if there was variety, than it must have some bacteria that will grow well in both plates.

As for my skin (palm), I believed I would have the most bacterial growth out of all the other sources because throughout the day I had touched door handles, keyboards, tables, etc. All these things that everyone else has had contact with, and probably isn’t washed often.

Lately, the lemon juice. The bottle of lemon juice was brought in by a lab partner. It had expired on September 19, 2015 and had developed a good inch of mold at the bottom.  For this sample wasn’t sure whether any bacteria would grow because of the acidity of the lemon juice.

Day 0 (Left: 24°C, Right: 37°C)

Day 2:

On day two I examined both my plates and there was already a huge amount of growth. In the 24°C plate, there was no growth on my skin (palm) or in lemon juice. However for the mouth, it turned a cloudy white and had tiny faint white dots in the exact shape that I swabbed on my plate. From under my shoe there was already 13 circular yellowish white colonies. In the 37°C plate, the bacterial growth was more significant. The mouth area was the same as in the 24°C plate but more pronounced. The bacteria that was under my shoe had 9 huge colonies, it could almost already be considered a lawn. Note that it has already started to overgrow its boundaries. While the skin (palm) had no growth in the 24°C plate, there were 60 colonies in the 37°C plate. And the lemon juice also had no growth.

Day 2 (Left: 24°C , Right: 37°C)

Day 7:

After incubating for seven days, I was shocked at how much bacteria grew on my plates. In both plates I could no longer accurately count the colonies of the other sources because the bacteria that was under my shoe had absolutely grown over the mouth, lemon juice, and skin (palm) section of the plate. From this cool website with terms for describing bacteria/yeast/mold colonies on media the bacteria under my shoe seem to be a raised, filiform yellowish white lawn. Using the medical microbe gallery my bacteria looked like the Isolation of an Unknown Bacterium on Trypticase Soy Agar.

Day 7 (Left: 24°C , Right: 37°C )

Mystery TSA Plates

I took Phone Screen and Car Key for this experiment. These are the photos I took on day 1, day 3, and day 7. I wanted to get an amazing result, but the phone screen and car key have a similar result. However, they get a different type of colony on day 7.

Day 1 of Experiment:

On the first day, I took my cell phone and car key for the experiment. On different two plates, I divided into two section. I swapped my phone screen and swapped it on the first section. Also did the same thing with my car key. After that, one of the plates was incubated at 24°C which is room temperature, and the other plate was incubated at 37 °C.

Figure 1: TSA Plates on Day 1 (37°C & 24°C)

Day 3 of Experiment:

On day 3, I was able to see three colonies on the car key plate which was incubated at 37 °C. You can see the photo below (left plate). There was nothing happened on the plate at room temperature. The size of the colonies was tiny.

Figure 2: TSA Plates on Day 3 (37°C & 24°C)

Day 7 of Experiment:

On day 7, I could see the colonies on both of the plates. There were two big colonies on the car key plate at 37°C. It seems like the colonies from day 3 grow up. Also, there were two small colonies on the other plates. They look pretty similar, but there was a light pink color of the colony on the car key plate at 37°C.

Figure 3: TSA plates on Day 7 (37°C & 24°C)

I took one of the colonies from each plate and zoomed in with my microscope. The size of the colonies on the plate at 37 °C was bigger, but when I see them with a microscope, they look just the same. Also, the light color of the colony from car key at 37 °C looked similar as the other colonies.

Figure 4: Phone Screen & Car Key at 37 °C on day 7

Figure 5: Phone Screen & Car Key at Room Temperature on day 7

Overall Observation/Conclusion:

The colonies on day 7 looked alike, and the result from car key and phone screen was pretty similar. However, the size and the speed of growing was a bit different at a different temperature. The colony grew up faster at the higher temperature. Also, the size of the colony at 37 °C was bigger than the one in the room temperature. The looking of each colony was pretty similar, but there was one different color of the colony on car key plate at 37 °C. This experiment was interesting to observe. Furthermore, I would get more amazing results if I took different type of samples.

Mystery TSA Plates by Kateka Seth

For this experiment, I chose to test for bacteria in places in most commonly touch around lab. The four places I chose are as follow:

1. Sink Handle
2. Lab Table Surface
3. Door Handle
4. My mouth (Note: I don't commonly touch my mouth around lab. This was for curiosity's sake, I swear.)

Day 0:

Not much to see on the day 0 plates besides my bad decision of not straightening out the plate (this picture really brings out my OCD). My prediction in terms of bacteria growth was that door handles would have the most followed by sink, then table, and lastly mouth. I would hope that my mouth would have less bacteria than these 3 surfaces. 

Day 2: 

My predictions were completely thrashed. I had expected that the bacteria plate held at 37 degree C would grow more than the one at 24 degree, but all other predictions were off. Bacteria would grow more at 37 degree because it is a warmer temperature, and most likely a more hospitable one for some. 37 degree C is human body temperature while 24 degree is room temperature. This means that bacteria more readily grow on us than inanimate objects around the room. Not the nicest thought, but it should be remembered that bacteria does not equal dirty. Without bacteria on our bodies we would not be able to function correctly. 

Colony count for Day 2:

	24 Degree	37 Degree
Sink Handle	11	A lot (20-25)
Lab Table Surface	None	1
Door Handle	None	None
Mouth	None	Tiny colonies (uncountable)

It was interesting to note that the door handle had no bacteria growth on either plate, which is completely different from my predictions. The growth of sink handle bacteria was insane, and quite frankly gross. Although unexpected to me, this growth was not unprecedented as people's hands are their dirtiest when they go to wash them. My mouth also had bacteria growth, but only on the 37 degree plate. This could possibly mean that the bacteria is native to the habitat of my mouth, and wouldn't survive in a different temperature environment. 

Day 7:

Day 7 brought about even more bacteria growth. The mouth bacteria on the 24 degree plate started to grow, and I can assume that these bacteria can survive in an environment different from my mouth. The sink handle on the 37 degree plate became even grosser with the new bacteria growth. The mouth bacteria also grew in size as the dots are much more noticeable than they were in day 2. If you didn't have a reason to brush your teeth before, let this be one. 

Colony count for Day 7: 

	24 Degree	37 Degree
Sink Handle	16	A lot (lawn-type growth)
Lab Table Surface	None	1
Door Handle	None	None
Mouth	Tiny colonies. One big	Many tiny colonies

The colony count did not change drastically from day 2. Mostly, the existing colonies simply got bigger and fused together. I was surprised that the door handle still did not show any sign of bacteria growth. Door handles tend to get a lot of hate, but this mystery TSA plate experiment has shown that they really don't deserve that hate. They're quite clean compared to the other surfaces we touch on a daily basis. 

Identification: 

To help me identify the bacteria grown on my plates, I used this gallery as well as the two links provided in Gwen's post.

Fig 1. Sink handle at 37 C. Day 7

Fig 2. Sink handle at 24 C. Day 7

The sink handle bacteria growth was relatively easy to identify. Both images show growth of some sort of unknown fungus, according to this site. Fig 1 shows a colony that takes a very particular shape, but unfortunately I was not able to identify it. The closest image to it from the previously mentioned site simply says "unknown isolate morphology."

Fig 3. Mouth at 37 C. Day 7

I really wanted to be able to identify these bacteria since they take up residence in my mouth, but I couldn't find one straight answer. Their round shape does not eliminate many bacteria. The most interesting feature is that each circle has another dot inside which looks like a nucleus. I was hoping this feature would allow me to identify it, but none of the gallery pictures have a bacteria which show a clear nucleus like this. I thought the closest match to be Staphylococcus aureus or Corynebacterium xerosis. I am interested in what you guys think it might be, or if any of your bacteria had the same nucleus-like feature as mine. Staph. aureus isn't uncommon to have on your body, but it could cause infection, so I'm hoping this bacteria is not aureus. I don't know much about Corynebacterium xerosis, but a quick google search leads me to believe that it is relatively innocuous.

This experiment provided me with a new perspective on the surfaces we touch everyday. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure I enjoy this new POV.

Mystery TSA dish by Tyler Klaudt 2

DAY 0: I wanted to test items that were used in my everyday life. I wanted to know how much bacteria were lurking on the items that I come in contact with everyday. The four items I chose were my phone, palm of my hand, sole of my shoe, and my mouth. I took a swab of each sample and placed them into two different petri dishes. One which I would incubate at room temp like my shoes and phone are at most of the day and also at 37 degrees Celsius. This is close to what its like for body temperature. 

DAY 1: Coming in, my prediction was that I was going to see large amounts of bacteria on my phone and almost as much in the rest of my samples. I did think the warmer samples would grow faster but all were going to have large amounts. To my surprise sole of shoe and palm of hand at 37 degrees Celsius was really the only two that showed a difference in the days. The people that always said your phone was a place with a ton of bacteria was wrong. Almost clean enough to eat off. Not really. I would not recommend doing that. 

DAY 7: We can now see growth in all 8 of the swabs. Although still not as much as I would think in my mouth and on my phone, the palm of my hand and sole of my shoe took off. My mouth at room temp had 14 small yellow dots and at 37 degrees Celsius had one medium size one with hundreds of the little yellow specks. My phone at room temp had three dots and 37 degrees Celsius it had the same amount on the dots were larger. The sole of my shoe at room temp only had seven yellow dots some dots were darker and lighter then others. At 37 degrees Celsius you can see four distinct shades of yellows with the duller yellow color taking up the whole quadrant. The brighter yellow dots were mixed with in. This is the first one in my opinion that starts to look cool. Now for the one that was most successful, the palm of my hand. At room temp there are 11 varying size colonies at varies colors and at 37 degrees Celsius that number goes up to about 30 colonies and it takes up the whole quadrant. There is also a weird branching look to it. Because this one looked so interesting. I decided to take a closer look at day 7 sole of shoe and try to identify some of these bacteria.

Figure 1 Sole of Shoe at 37 Degrees Celsius

Unfortunately, after looking closer, I wasn’t able to identify any bacteria and match it with any known bacteria or picture I had, even with the 400x magnification I was using. My results from this experiment did not match what I thought I would fine. I thought there would be much more bacteria on surface’s like my mouth and phone, but it looks like I’m cleaner then I assumed.

This was an interesting experiment to be able to see what kind of bacteria we had growing in our everyday items. Although not my experiment, I saw that there was a ton of bacteria on the biology sink which was surprising to me. There were more bacteria on the sink handle then the toilet. I guess its safe to say its better not to wash your hands. Only kidding.

Mystery TSA Plates by Tyler Klaudt

DAY 0: I wanted to test items that were used in my everyday life. I wanted to know how much bacteria were lurking on the items that I come in contact with everyday. The four items I chose were my phone, palm of my hand, sole of my shoe, and my mouth. I took a swab of each sample and placed them into two different petri dishes. One which I would incubate at room temp like my shoes and phone are at most of the day and also at 37 degrees Celsius. This is close to what its like for body temperature.

DAY 1: Coming in, my prediction was that I was going to see large amounts of bacteria on my phone and almost as much in the rest of my samples. I did think the warmer samples would grow faster but all were going to have large amounts. To my surprise sole of shoe and palm of hand at 37 degrees Celsius was really the only two that showed a difference in the days. The people that always said your phone was a place with a ton of bacteria was wrong. Almost clean enough to eat off. Not really. I would not recommend doing that.

DAY 7: We can now see growth in all 8 of the swabs. Although still not as much as I would think in my mouth and on my phone, the palm of my hand and sole of my shoe took off. My mouth at room temp had 14 small yellow dots and at 37 degrees Celsius had one medium size one with hundreds of the little yellow specks. My phone at room temp had three dots and 37 degrees Celsius it had the same amount on the dots were larger. The sole of my shoe at room temp only had seven yellow dots some dots were darker and lighter then others. At 37 degrees Celsius you can see four distinct shades of yellows with the duller yellow color taking up the whole quadrant. The brighter yellow dots were mixed with in. This is the first one in my opinion that starts to look cool. Now for the one that was most successful, the palm of my hand. At room temp there are 11 varying size colonies at varies colors and at 37 degrees Celsius that number goes up to about 30 colonies and it takes up the whole quadrant. There is also a weird branching look to it. Because this one looked so interesting. I decided to take a closer look at day 7 sole of shoe and try to identify some of these bacteria.

Figure 1 Sole of Shoe at 37 Degrees Celsius

Unfortunately, after looking closer, I wasn’t able to identify any bacteria and match it with any known bacteria or picture I had even with the 400x magnification I was using. My results from this experiment did not match what I thought I would find. I thought there would be much more bacteria on surface’s like my mouth and phone, but it looks like I’m cleaner then I assumed.

This was an interesting experiment to be able to see what kind of bacteria we had growing in our everyday items. Although not my experiment, I saw that there was a ton of bacteria on the biology sink which was surprising to me. There were more bacteria on the sink handle then the toilet. I guess its safe to say its better not to wash your hands. Only kidding.

Mystery TSA Plates

Hi Everyone,

Bacteria is something that exists and is found in our daily life but we can't actually see it by our eyes, but we always can see it under a microscope. So, in order to be able to see Bacteria, we should leave it to grow under certain conditions and to have some different types of colonies.
In this experiment, I decided to choose my phone and my pencil, since I use those two objects the most in my daily life. At first, I hypothesized that my phone would have more colonies that my pencil, because I use it more frequently.


Day 0

The TSA plates were clean before having any swab on them

We prepared the TSA and got it ready to have some swabs in there. After that I took a swab from my phone first, then from my pencil and I stored one of the plates at the room temperature (24°C) , and the other one at 37°C which is the body temperature.

Day 2

After 2 days, one plate has growth and the other plate is clear

After two days, I found that one of the plates (room temperature 24°C)  was still clean and had no growth , but in the other plate (body temperature 37°C ) there was slightly growth and as it shown in the picture, my phone has more colonies that my pencil does.

Day 7

more colonies were more expanded in both plates  

After storing the plates for 7 days at 37°C and at 24°C, More colonies were widened in both plates, but still more growth on the 37°C plate and especially on the phone. I also realized that a new pink colonies appeared on the phone part at the room temperature which made me wonder what kind of bacteria is that?
So, after searching on this website http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/MicroBio_Interpreting_Plates.shtml I found out that my samples have some different types of colonies; such as pink yeast colonies (room temperature plate), Bacillus subtilis (37°C plate), and Staphylococcus aures (room temperature plate).

Overall, I couldn't believe that I saw different real types of bacteria in my things that I daily use and how the change of the temperature can develop different types of colonies and different quantities.
One more thing that caught my eyes when I first looked the plates after 7 days of storing is that on my room temperature plate had two pink colonies which means that I have a unique type of bacteria. That actually made me very surprised and made me wonder how a person can develop different kinds of bacteria than the others. It's actually a good thing to be different and more unique. Lastly, after observing my plates and my other classmates' plates, I'd say that Bacteria is so abundant and has many different types and shape and each one of us develop different kinds of bacteria than each other and that's very interesting.  

  

Mystery TSA Plates

Hey guys!

So here's my results from Exercise A: Ubiquity of Microorganisms of Lab #1: Survey of Prokaryotes. The four surfaces I swabbed were my hair, hair tie, house key, and cell phone. Below are photos and data of the growth progression of my plates over the course of a week. 

Figure 1. Photos of plates (upside down) immediately after preparation.

Figure 2. Photos of the room temperature plate and body temperature plate on Day 3 and Day 7.

Table 1: Room Temperature (24°C) Plate Colony Count

DAY	HAIR	CELL PHONE	HOUSE KEY	HAIR TIE
Day 1	0	0	0	0
Day 3	1	1	2	9
Day 7	15	5	7	21

Table 2: Body Temperature (37°C) Plate Colony Count

DAY	HAIR	CELL PHONE	HOUSE KEY	HAIR TIE
Day 1	0	0	0	0
Day 3	315	36	22	332
Day 7	351	38	23	321

Identification 
Both plates contained several organisms which I was able to identify some through the Bacteria in Photos Website. On the body temperature plate, Mycoplasmas has a 'fried- egg' like appearance, Staphylococcus epidermis are white & round, and Staphylococcus aureus are yellow & round. The room temperature plate Pseudomonas and a green mold grew which was not present on the body temperature plate.

Figure 3. Mycoplasmas, Staphylococcus epidermidis, and Staphylococcus aureus are identified on the body temperature plate on Day 7

Figure 4. Pseudomonas (left) and green mold (right) found on the room temperature plate on Day 7.

When I first looked at my plates on Day 3, I was embarrassed that my body temperature plate had already produced an abundance of bacteria in comparison to my lab partners' plates. By then, I had over 300 colonies total and each section had a pretty decent amount whereas my lab partners did not have as much. My room temperature plate on Day 3 was less exciting. It only had 13 colonies so I predicted that there wouldn't be much more growth from there. 

On Day 7, the body temperature plate colonies grew larger as well as a few developed distinguishing features as expected. The room temperature plate developed a cool yellow flower-ish looking bacteria and a green mold which did not appear on the other plate. A few factors may have attributed to this since consistent techniques were applied during preparation. It could be that certain bacteria grow at different rates in various temperatures, contamination, or a combination of both. As far as my microorganism abundance, I believe I chose surfaces that either have a good bacterial flora or that come into contact with it often.

My most shocking result was from my hair tie which I am still wearing today. Since there were different bacteria on each plate indicates that it contains the most diverse microorganisms. Considering what I do with my hair tie, wrapped around my hair, on my wrist, in my bag, and placed on numerous surfaces provides many opportunities to pick up anything its on. While researching human bacterial flora, I came across a CBS News article regarding a woman who gets an infection from a hair tie. Its frightening to think of getting an infection from an everyday item but it has taught me to be more cautious of where I place it.