Sarah Radovich

Abstract:

This study is related to the effectiveness of how disinfectants are used to kill bacteria. This is important because if disinfectants aren’t used properly then potentially dangerous bacteria will stay on commonly used surfaces in our environment or worse, the bacteria will build resistance to the disinfectants. The objective of this study was to figure out if using more disinfectant and leaving it on longer would affect how many bacteria are killed. My hypothesis/research objective was if I allowed disinfectant to stay on a surface for a longer period of time and used more disinfectant, then more bacteria would die. This was researched by putting different amounts and kinds of disinfectant into test tubes with grown non-pathogenic E- coli. Then plating the bacteria to determine if the amount and kind of disinfectant matters. My data suggests that amount and type of disinfectant do matter, and that the Clorox disinfectant worked best.