5 Where Did All These Germs Come From?
Arianna Buehler; Mikayla Stephens; and Ben Spector
Age Group
Fourth to sixth grade
Keywords
Germs, cleanliness, and bacteria
Brief Description
You will be going around your house and swabbing items to obtain bacteria that may be living there. Then you will grow this bacteria in order to see what cool things are living around your house. You will also swab your child’s dirty hands and their clean hands to see what could be growing on their hands.To grow the bacteria, you will make unflavored gelatin, swab items around your house with a cotton swab, swipe the swab across the gelatin, and watch your bacteria grow. Hopefully, this will encourage your children to wash their hands more often! The whole process should take about a week from beginning to end because the bacteria will be growing for a majority of this time, but there will only be about an hour of work.
Materials Needed
- ½ cup of water
- Pot and stove
- 1 package of unflavored gelatin (2 tablespoons)
- 2 tablespoons of sugar
- 5 paper cups (you may need more or less depending on how thin you pour the gelatin)
- Plastic wrap
- Cotton swabs
Background for Children
You might not be able to see them with your eyes, but bacteria are everywhere. They look like this:
These organisms may be a lot smaller than us, but they are able to easily multiply and spread across surfaces. You can find them on many surfaces that you might touch with your hands, like doorknobs, tables, or phones, so it is important to wash your hands if you have been touching things, especially in public places where many people have been.
Bacteria are able to multiply by copying themselves using a process called binary fission where one bacteria will become two identical bacteria. Bacteria may be able to multiply better depending on the environment they are living in. Bacteria love to live in places that are warm and can provide them with food. In order for you to grow your own bacteria you will use gelatin (the Jello that you eat!) because it will give them the food and nutrients they love.
As you may know, we are going through a global pandemic caused by coronavirus. While viruses and bacteria are different they both live and multiply on surfaces around you and can cause illnesses . In order to kill these bad bacteria and viruses, hand sanitizer can be used as many advertise that they will destroy up to 99.9% of bacteria and viruses. When you begin your experiment you will grow bacteria living on your dirty hands and then grow the bacteria that live on your clean hands. Pay attention to the differences between the bacteria from your sanitized hands and unsanitized hands.
Description of activity
Worksheet
Additional background for parents
When going through this activity make sure you gather swabs from all different places to be sure you show your child which places are the dirtiest and which places are the cleanest! Also, make sure that your child does not try to eat the gelatin! Although it might look like food they enjoy, this is dangerous since you are essentially creating a bacterial culture not unlike what a scientist might do in a lab with agar gel. However, it might be a fun idea to reward your child for learning something new by giving them clean (and flavored) Jello as a treat.