STEM 4: Capstone

Objective

Throughout the course of STEM 4, I created a capstone project that started off with completing a Scientific literature review. This paper was a dive into extensive research surrounding the topic of my choice. After completing the project, I was tasked with completing a project that pertained to the topic. This project could have been and experiment, innovation to a predetermined issue, or something else that showed the efforts of the conducted research.  The end goal of this project was to be presented in not only the Lacey Township High School science fair but the Jersey Shore science fair in March 2024.

Procedure

Going into designing the procedure, I decided to create a test on the overall sensitivity of bacteria to different types of medication. All of the medicine was prescribed to help show the growing resistance due to the overuse and self-prescribing of medication. The medication chosen surrounded common cough and congestion medicines such as, promethazine, prednisolone, and guaifenesin, which will be reacting to E. Coli bacteria. There is both up to date and expired medication to compare the results of whether the medicine will work despite being out of date.

Materials 

• 6 Petri dish

• 3 different Antibiotics

• Promethazine

• Guaifenesin

• Prednisolone  

• E. coli bacteria

• Nutrient Agar

• 30 Antibiotic disk

• Ruler

Part 1

1. Measure out 25 mL of chosen medicine.  

2. Take 5 antibiotic disks and soak them in one of the medications until fully coated. 

3. Place the nutrient agar in a petri dish with the E. coli bacteria. 

4. Take the antibiotic disk out of the medication and place it evenly around the petri dish. 

5. Label the petri dish with the medicine being tested.

6. Repeat this process for the remaining antibiotics. 

7. Place them in an incubator at 37℃ for at least 16 hours for bacteria to grow. 

8. Once the growth period is finished, take petri dishes out of the incubator.

9. Take a ruler and measure the zone of inhibition around the antibiotic disks for all three petri dishes. 

Part 2

1. Measure out 25 mL of chosen medicine.  

2. Take 5 antibiotic disks and soak them in one of the medications until fully coated. 

3. Place the nutrient agar in a petri dish with

4. Take the petri dish with the medication previously that contained the bacteria the chosen medication that was tested already.

5. Swab the zones of inhibition around the antibiotic disk and place it onto a new petri dish. 

6. Place them in an incubator at 37℃ for at least 16 hours for bacteria to grow. 

7. Once the growth period is finished, take petri dishes out of the incubator. 

8. Take a ruler and measure the zone of inhibition around the antibiotic disks for all three petri dishes.

Data Analysis

• If the antibiotic disk is completely surrounded by bacteria, the bacteria is completely resistant to the antibiotic. 

• If the antibiotic has an area surrounding it with no bacteria this is known as the zone of inhibition. This zone shows that the bacteria is still sensitive to the antibiotic so by measuring this zone you can determine how effective the antibiotic is against the bacteria. 

• Graph the information

• Determine the standard deviation of the test in sheets. 

Results

Conclusion

With the current results of the project, the medication isn’t ideally effective against the bacteria. For multiple of the samples, there was little to no zone of inhibition, but there were some recordings of zone of inhibition. While trying to make the resistant bacteria, it was observed that the zone of inhibition was able to grow smaller with the second set of testing. This help to support the hypothesis of bacterial resistance being very easy to obtain and something that is more prevalent in the world today.