Science Fair - Science Experiment

Science Fair: Bacteria Experiment for Science Fair or In Class:
Turn your students into real scientists with this long term experiment which teaches scientific literacy through the writing of a real scientific paper.


This product is an editable guided walk-through for the completion of a full scientific paper (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Works Cited) based on the question: "Which antibacterial chemical: ethyl alcohol (hand sanitizer), isopropyl (rubbing alcohol), or Triclosan (Antibacterial soap) is the most effective at inhibiting bacterial growth?


This product contains:
1. A teachers guide: Descriptions on how to set-up the experiment, materials needed, procedures, and helpful tips.
2. A lesson on Analyzing a Scientific paper utilizing a graphic organizer (Scientific Paper Included)
3. Student pages: a guided walk-through taking the students through the process of writing a full scientific paper.


This long term project (which takes about 2-3 months to complete, spread out intermittently) guides students through the process of writing a scientific paper in the same way scientists write their scholarly papers. Students are taught how to write an Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and works cited section.


This guided walk-through covers the following topics:

Abstract:
* Explanations of what goes in an introduction
- What the study was about & the hypothesis
- Summary of how the study was done
- The results that were obtained
- Significance of the results including the hypothesis being supported or not supported

Introduction:
* Explanations of what goes in an introduction
- What bacteria colonies are and what they look like (color, size,shape texture, etc.)
- What Fungal colonies are and what they look like
- The Cellular processes by which ethyl alcohol, isopropyl, and triclosan work to kill bacteria

Methods:
* Teacher notes and tips for conducting the experiment

Results:
* Instructions for:
- Calculating the average number of bacterial colonies
- Graphing the data
- Interpreting the data graph in words
- Describing the appearance of bacterial and fungal colonies

Discussion:
* Instructions for:
- Calculating the data to see if they are statistically significant
- Interpreting the significance of the data
- Calculating Percent effectiveness
- Supporting or not supporting the hypothesis
- Creating a theory to explain the results
- Creating an additional experiment that could be done to test the theory
- Discussing issues that occurred during in the experiment