We sought to Investigate the Growth of Leaf Yeast. We each brought in leaves from our own areas as we all live in different towns, Drogheda, Balbriggan, Skerries, Lusk and Stamullen. We needed several pieces of equipment such as petri dishes, disinfectant, tweezers, scissors, shopping boards, forceps, paper towels, thermometer, incubator, para-film, markers, labels and Vaseline. We wore goggles and tied our hair back as our safety precautions. We used a control for all of our sample locations and our variable was the location of the leaves.
Firstly we sterilized our hands, all of our equipment and our malt agar petri dishes. We kept one petri dish from each area closed and placed it upside down to act as our control. Before putting our leaves in the petri dishes we put a ridge of Vaseline on the inside of the lid, this would make the leaves stick to the lid. We each put leaves from our own areas into at least four petri dishes. We placed the leaves with their upper side stuck to the Vaseline. Next we removed the lids and placed the base of the petri dishes onto the lid, sealed them with para-film and placed them upside down. We then labelled all of them according to the areas from which they came.
After a day we turned the petri dishes to the right way around and put them in an incubator. We are still awaiting our final results but we expect to see pink shiny pimples which are colonies of yeast, on the experimental plates. We will then compare the upper and lower leaf surfaces for yeast distribution.
After leaving our petri-dishes for a week, we were able to observe our results. We discovered that the leaves from Lusk and Stamullen had the most yeast grown on it, this means that there is a low level of pollution in both of these towns. The leaves from Skerries and Balbriggan were quite similar and had nearly the same amount of yeast on each. The leaves from Drogheda had the least amount of yeast grown on it and this suggests that this town has a high level of pollution. We can conclude that there is a correlation between the population of the sample area and the population of the area. The greater the population, the more pollution the area has.
Firstly we sterilized our hands, all of our equipment and our malt agar petri dishes. We kept one petri dish from each area closed and placed it upside down to act as our control. Before putting our leaves in the petri dishes we put a ridge of Vaseline on the inside of the lid, this would make the leaves stick to the lid. We each put leaves from our own areas into at least four petri dishes. We placed the leaves with their upper side stuck to the Vaseline. Next we removed the lids and placed the base of the petri dishes onto the lid, sealed them with para-film and placed them upside down. We then labelled all of them according to the areas from which they came.
After a day we turned the petri dishes to the right way around and put them in an incubator. We are still awaiting our final results but we expect to see pink shiny pimples which are colonies of yeast, on the experimental plates. We will then compare the upper and lower leaf surfaces for yeast distribution.
After leaving our petri-dishes for a week, we were able to observe our results. We discovered that the leaves from Lusk and Stamullen had the most yeast grown on it, this means that there is a low level of pollution in both of these towns. The leaves from Skerries and Balbriggan were quite similar and had nearly the same amount of yeast on each. The leaves from Drogheda had the least amount of yeast grown on it and this suggests that this town has a high level of pollution. We can conclude that there is a correlation between the population of the sample area and the population of the area. The greater the population, the more pollution the area has.