| 2002 |
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YEAR BOOK |
ST DOMINIC�S HIGH SCHOOL, SUTTON, DUBLIN 13
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Which foods inhibit plaque?
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We decided to test three different foods. They were: bread (white), carrots, and noodles. On day one we made agar plates. These agar plates would help the bacteria and fungi to grow so that the colonies would be visible to the naked eye. We put eighty agar tablets into 400mls of boiling water. When the tablets where dissolved we poured the mixture into eighty Petri dishes. We left the agar plates to set for a day. On day two we got twenty people to come up to the lab after they had eaten their lunches. We asked them to eat a stick of chewing gum for three minutes. When the three minutes were over, we swabbed their teeth with a sterile cotton bud. We then wiped the bud onto the agar plate. We sealed the agar plates and put them in the incubator. We did this with the bread, carrot and noodles. We left the eighty agar plates in the incubator for one week to let the bacteria and fungi grow.
After the agar plates had been in the incubator for one week, we took them out and recorded our results. We found our results by counting the number of bacteria and fungi on each plate. We calculated the average number of bacterial and fungal colonies on each plate for each food type.
Our results showed that bread was the best inhibitor of plaque and noodles were the worst. But none of them was a better inhibitor of plaque than chewing gum.
Heather Barry & Aisling McStay entered their project in the Junior Group Section in the Biological & Ecological Sciences Category at the Esat Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in January 2002. They won a Special Award presented by The Dental Health Foundation. Their teacher was Ms Audrey Carty.
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