Previous Experiments: https://explorable.com/mold-bread-experiment What Makes Mold Grow?
We are going to perform a mold bread experiment to grow our own mold and find out whether mold does indeed grow faster at higher temperatures.
What is Mold?
Mold is something that we often take for granted, as something that makes us have to throw the bread away or the cheese smell bad.Mold is, in fact, a fascinating organism which has had many different uses over the years and our lives would not be the same without it.Most of us know that food seems to become moldy more quickly in the summer than in the winter when it is colder. Food in refrigerators seems to keep longer than food left out in the sun. Is this true? Does temperature really affect the rate …show more content…
Put one slice of this bread into each bag and seal the bags tightly.
5. Put the 5 ‘A’ bags into the freezer, the 5 ‘B’ bags into the refrigerator and the 5 ‘C’ bags somewhere safe in a warm room. Because the bags in the freezer and fridge will not be getting much light it is best to cover the ‘C’ bags to make sure that light is a constant.
6. Every 24 hours, preferably at exactly the same time every day, using the plastic grid, count the number of square centimeters of mold on each slice of bread. If the mold covers more than half a square, count it as 1cm, if less than half a square, count as 0 cm. You must never open the bags.
7. You should repeat these counting processes for 10 days or until there are significant measurable results.
8. Keep a careful note of your results for each slice of bread for the entire duration of the experiment. You can even take pictures or draw the slices if you want to be really scientific!
9. Average the results for sample types A, B and C.
10. Once you have finished, throw out all of the bags without opening them.
Results
Because each square of bread is 100 cm2, you can express your results as a percentage. For each of the bread types, A, B or C average the amount of mold grown over the ten days and write these figures into a …show more content…
Moldy food must be thrown away and this costs restaurants and manufacturers a lot of money.
For companies using mold to make food or medicine they need to know at which temperature mold grows best. The faster the mold grows, the quicker they can sell their product and make money.
Further Experiments
Now that you have finished and obtained some results, maybe you want to see if other variables affect the rate at which mold grows. Maybe you could keep the temperature the same for all of the samples but use different types of bread.
You could try adding moisture to the slices or putting different amounts of sugar or lemon juice onto the slices. As long as you only vary one thing at a time, you can make some interesting studies about mold.
Temperature is not the only thing that affects the rate of mold growth so feel free to try and find out more about this interesting organism.
Facts About Mold
Mold is not a plant but a fungus like mushrooms and toadstools. It grows on food and other organic matter, breaking it down into slime and extracting nutrients for
We are going to perform a mold bread experiment to grow our own mold and find out whether mold does indeed grow faster at higher temperatures.
What is Mold?
Mold is something that we often take for granted, as something that makes us have to throw the bread away or the cheese smell bad.Mold is, in fact, a fascinating organism which has had many different uses over the years and our lives would not be the same without it.Most of us know that food seems to become moldy more quickly in the summer than in the winter when it is colder. Food in refrigerators seems to keep longer than food left out in the sun. Is this true? Does temperature really affect the rate …show more content…
Put one slice of this bread into each bag and seal the bags tightly.
5. Put the 5 ‘A’ bags into the freezer, the 5 ‘B’ bags into the refrigerator and the 5 ‘C’ bags somewhere safe in a warm room. Because the bags in the freezer and fridge will not be getting much light it is best to cover the ‘C’ bags to make sure that light is a constant.
6. Every 24 hours, preferably at exactly the same time every day, using the plastic grid, count the number of square centimeters of mold on each slice of bread. If the mold covers more than half a square, count it as 1cm, if less than half a square, count as 0 cm. You must never open the bags.
7. You should repeat these counting processes for 10 days or until there are significant measurable results.
8. Keep a careful note of your results for each slice of bread for the entire duration of the experiment. You can even take pictures or draw the slices if you want to be really scientific!
9. Average the results for sample types A, B and C.
10. Once you have finished, throw out all of the bags without opening them.
Results
Because each square of bread is 100 cm2, you can express your results as a percentage. For each of the bread types, A, B or C average the amount of mold grown over the ten days and write these figures into a …show more content…
Moldy food must be thrown away and this costs restaurants and manufacturers a lot of money.
For companies using mold to make food or medicine they need to know at which temperature mold grows best. The faster the mold grows, the quicker they can sell their product and make money.
Further Experiments
Now that you have finished and obtained some results, maybe you want to see if other variables affect the rate at which mold grows. Maybe you could keep the temperature the same for all of the samples but use different types of bread.
You could try adding moisture to the slices or putting different amounts of sugar or lemon juice onto the slices. As long as you only vary one thing at a time, you can make some interesting studies about mold.
Temperature is not the only thing that affects the rate of mold growth so feel free to try and find out more about this interesting organism.
Facts About Mold
Mold is not a plant but a fungus like mushrooms and toadstools. It grows on food and other organic matter, breaking it down into slime and extracting nutrients for