Natural Disinfectant In Paper

After analysing the data it is revealed that natural disinfectant, Tea Tree Oil weren’t as effective at inhibiting the growth of Staphylococcus epidermidis compared to Dettol. This is show in the data displayed above in both the Table and Graph. From the data collected it was discovered that tea tree oil wasn’t the best chemical to use to inhibit the growth of the bacteria. It was found that on all three of the agar plates almost all of the surface area around the paper disk was inhibited. The chemical that appeared to be the most effective at inhibiting the growth of bacteria was the Dettol. On all the samples from this chemical, no bacteria grew all around the paper disks.
The reason as to why the disinfectants were able to inhibit …show more content…
This raises the question of why there is such difference in results. This could be of many issues including the amount of disinfectant on the paper disk compared to the others or if in fact there was any on. This factor was not very well controlled as many of the substances had different viscosities, such as the palm olive hand wash was very think and hard to place four drops into the cup. Not only this some of the data collect could have been incorrect due to too much substance on the paper disk which would have resulted in leaking into other quadrants causing inaccurate results of where the chemical actually inhibited the growth of bacteria. To control all these factors regarding chemical amounts on the paper, all disks need to be soaked the same length of time and then correspondingly shaken for the same duration. This will decrease any more problems regarding this matter. One problem that was prevalent in all trials was the even spreading over the agar plate. Many of the plates had evidence of uneven spreading of the culture causing areas of the plate not to as well cover as others, impacting on reliability of results. The only way in which this can be improved and controlled in other trials would be the way in which the bacteria is spread and the skill used to do so. The final error that has impacted on the results so greatly is the concentrations of the chemicals. Some were a lot stronger than others which challenged fair …show more content…
Allowing further conclusions to draw regarding whether natural disinfectants are more effective at inhibiting the growth of Staphylococcus epidermidis. As there were many restrictions on material usage and time it was hard to fully get enough testing and trials to obtain the best data. To achieve a real answer to the question hundreds of tests would need to be taken with unlimited supplies at hand. As this was the first time this experiment was conducted, the skill level was not there on many aspects of the experiment for example the even spreading of the culture across the agar plate. Other things that would have deemed this experiment more effective and result in better results would be to have a wider range of both industrial and natural disinfectants, other bacterial species to see the reaction and more accurate ways of recording the data. However the main key that would improve the accuracy of the data would be a sterile environment as the air has many