The Antimicrobial Properties of Plants: Garlic and Mint
The Antimicrobial Properties of Plants [Garlic and Mint]
AIM: to investigate the antimicrobial properties of garlic and mint and how effective they were. We were trying to see whether the bacteria will grow around the different plants.
VARIABLES:
Independent: type of plant used
Dependent: the diameter in mm of clearing
Confounding: room temperature, surrounding bacteria, concentration of plant solution
HYPOTHESIS
My hypothesis is that garlic will be least affected by the bacteria as it will be able to protect itself whereas, the control and the mint will be more susceptible to it.
As a control test what we did was, we dipped a paper disc into the alcohol solution we used to dissolve the plants; the reason we did this was to test to see whether or not the alcohol would affect the end result. If bacteria grew around the alcohol- paper disc this would mean the alcohol had no effect on the bacteria. This is what we want.
Refer to the attached sheets for details.
SAFETY PRECAUTIONS
No food or drink was to be consumed during the experiment as we were using living bacteria which could harm our health.
The petri dishes containing the growing bacteria were left covered and not be left without their lids. We had to wash our hand, due to the probability of the bacteria having transferred to our hands to avoid contamination.
We had to be careful to keep the alcohol away from the flame used to sterilise the scalpel.
RESULTS
Plant | Area without bacteria | Garlic | 23 | Mint | 0 | Control | 0 |
The control had no area free of bacteria, meaning that the alcohol had no antimicrobial properties meaning it couldn’t inhibit the growth of bacteria.
Bacteria within 23mm of the bacteria were killed. However bacteria were present at some distance away from the paper disc. This shows that garlic had some features of antimicrobial properties; mint however showed no features of antimicrobial properties as no area was free of bacteria, meaning that mint has no
AIM: to investigate the antimicrobial properties of garlic and mint and how effective they were. We were trying to see whether the bacteria will grow around the different plants.
VARIABLES:
Independent: type of plant used
Dependent: the diameter in mm of clearing
Confounding: room temperature, surrounding bacteria, concentration of plant solution
HYPOTHESIS
My hypothesis is that garlic will be least affected by the bacteria as it will be able to protect itself whereas, the control and the mint will be more susceptible to it.
As a control test what we did was, we dipped a paper disc into the alcohol solution we used to dissolve the plants; the reason we did this was to test to see whether or not the alcohol would affect the end result. If bacteria grew around the alcohol- paper disc this would mean the alcohol had no effect on the bacteria. This is what we want.
Refer to the attached sheets for details.
SAFETY PRECAUTIONS
No food or drink was to be consumed during the experiment as we were using living bacteria which could harm our health.
The petri dishes containing the growing bacteria were left covered and not be left without their lids. We had to wash our hand, due to the probability of the bacteria having transferred to our hands to avoid contamination.
We had to be careful to keep the alcohol away from the flame used to sterilise the scalpel.
RESULTS
Plant | Area without bacteria | Garlic | 23 | Mint | 0 | Control | 0 |
The control had no area free of bacteria, meaning that the alcohol had no antimicrobial properties meaning it couldn’t inhibit the growth of bacteria.
Bacteria within 23mm of the bacteria were killed. However bacteria were present at some distance away from the paper disc. This shows that garlic had some features of antimicrobial properties; mint however showed no features of antimicrobial properties as no area was free of bacteria, meaning that mint has no