Lunch Meats Lab Report

If the turkey is left out for nine hours in a room temperature environment, then there will be 10% more bacteria on it than on the ham and 20% more bacteria than on the bologna. The idea of this experiment is to test which lunch meat will attract more bacteria within a three day incubation period after being left out for nine hours. This project is interesting because bacteria growth on leftovers that have not been refrigerated has always interested me. Many people will leave out food, throw it back in the fridge, and get it back out to eat. People don’t realize that just a few hours can do a lot to your food and then to your body. Lunch meats, especially poultry, can attract bacteria very quickly.
I chose to experiment with bologna, ham, and turkey because those are the three common lunch meats eaten. The goal of this experiment is to find out how fast bacteria can spread on certain lunch meats and if the lunch meats are still safe to eat after being left out for just a few hours. The three types of lunch meat …show more content…
The person experimenting will need goggles, gloves, and an apron. To do the project, you will need nine glass petri dishes (make sure you get them sterile), agar, beef broth, sterile cotton swabs, three slices of bologna, three slices of ham, and three slices of turkey. Experimental errors would be breathing on the plate of agar, amount of agar, and water on the plate of agar.
In conclusion, the results did not support the hypothesis. The bologna grew an average of 15 total colonies and an average of two colony types. The turkey grew an average of 91 colonies and an average of two colony types. Lastly, the ham grew an average of 8 colonies and averaged only one colony type. The turkey grew 76 more colonies than the bologna and 83 more colonies than the ham. The bologna and turkey only grew only two different types of colonies while the ham grew only one colony