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Students should not tested.

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"These tests are too cruel to be taken"

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Doctors can perform surgery on the heart, but teachers are able to guide their hearts.

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Will multiple choice test determine success

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Students are 20% of the population but 100% of our future

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They focus on collaboration instead of competition.

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standardized testing is unnecessary

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"Are we preparing students for the future or the past"

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teachers are getting underpaid.

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these tests are too crude and should not be used.

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“Calling school to the stand for killing individuality, creativity and being intellectually abusive”

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Students are 20% of our population but are 100% of our future..

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Finland has one of the best school systems in the world.

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Quote

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What level of inquiry is this experiment?

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Growing Bacteria in Petri Dishes Experiment
Looking for the best hands-on bacteria science fair projects that will really wow friends and family? Steve Spangler Science has a great selection of culturing bacteria ideas, hands-on experiments and bacteria science fair projects for kids! Our super-fun projects and culturing bacteria experiments will help your young scientists experience amazing and memorable bacteria growth before their eyes - in petri dish in your home or classroom!
Culturing Bacteria in a Petri Dish with Agar
Collect samples around you, test them and see what bacteria will grow in an agar-filled petri dish. These samples can be from anywhere: test toilet seats, doorknobs, refrigerator doors, faucet taps and other surfaces in your home or school to see what yucky fomites are lurking in the realms of the elusive and seemingly invisible cellular level.
Science Experiments at Steve Spangler Science
You just never know what goobers are festering in the recesses of microbiology. It may be shocking when you quickly see a petri dish filled with bacteria emerge. With this experiment, you will likely realize that your mom was right when she told you to "Wash your hands with soap and warm water!" This easy-to-use science experiment uses a petri dish prepared with nutrient agar (a seaweed derivative with beef nutrients added) and is an ideal way to reveal the bacteria hiding all around you. You may not believe what you find hiding in all corners of your home or school!
Bacteria Experiments and Products
Follow the step-by-step instructions below for a learning experiment that kids of all ages will remember. For an all-in-one kit, be sure to check out our Growing Bacteria science kit. Need additional petri dishes to supply your yearning for learning about bacteria in your environment? Order more petri dishes from our comprehensive selection of lab supplies at Steve Spangler Science!
Growing Bacteria Kit
Experiment

How Does It Work

You're likely to have a huge variety of colors, shapes, and smells in your tiny worlds. Count the number of colonies on the plate, note the differences in color, shape, and other properties. Getting bacteria to grow can be a little tricky, so don't get discouraged if you have to make more than one attempt. Allow enough time for them to grow, too. You need millions of them in one place just to see them at all. They're really tiny! In a lab, you'd use your trusty inoculating loop to pick up a bit of the bacteria in order to create a slide for further study under a microscope.

Most bacteria collected in your environment will not be harmful. However, once they multiply into millions of colonies in a Petri dish they become more of a hazard. Be sure to protect open cuts with rubber gloves and never ingest or breathe in growing bacteria. Keep your Petri dishes sealed in the zipper-lock bags for the entire experiment. When you're finished with the experiment, some people recommend placing the Petri dish bag in a larger zipper-lock bag along with a few drops of bleach. Seal the larger bag and dispose of it in the trash.

Science Fair Connection

Just growing bacteria in a Petri dish is not a science fair experiment. Yes, it is gross and cool and fascinating, but it doesn't meet the requirements of a science fair project. If you want to do a science fair project about germs, you have to add a variable, or something that changes in the experiment.

In the Growing Bacteria activity described above, adding an anti-bacterial hand sanitizer is a variable. Make one dish of germs and one dish of germs with a drop of the anti-bacterial sanitizer or, better yet, make three dishes: one as the control (just germs), one with an anti-bacterial sanitizer, and a third dish with another brand of anti-bacterial sanitizer. Then you can see which anti-bacterial sanitizer is more effective in killing germs. Make sure all three Petri dishes have germs collected from the same place in your home or classroom at the same time so you know they are all exposed to the same bacteria. The dishes also need to be grown in the same warm, dark place for the same amount of time so that the conditions are standardized as much as possible.

Growing Bacteria is such a popular activity that we've written it as a sample science fair project (see the link below). The sample project describes the swabbing technique to collect the germs and gives you lots of helpful hints about growing things. It makes suggestions about variables and gives you some ideas to make the project your own. What it doesn't give you is the data. What fun would that be? You'll want to do the experiment for yourself to test your own ideas and make your own discoveries!

If you want to do a science fair project on growing goobers, check out the Growing Bacteria science fair project.

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Growing Bacteria in Petri Dishes Experiment

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Growing Bacteria in Petri Dishes Experiment Looking for the best hands-on bacteria science fair projects that will really wow friends and family? Steve Spangler Science has a great selection of culturing bacteria ideas, hands-on experiments and bacteria science fair projects for kids!