• Question: How long does it take to grow the bacteria you need for your experiments?

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      Asked by Jess32lucy to ☣ Danna on 17 Jun 2016.
      • Photo: Danna Gifford

        Danna Gifford answered on 17 Jun 2016:

        Hi 469antf23,

        It depends on what kind of experiment I’m doing that week. Usually they grow pretty quickly, so I have most of the data I need within about 8 hours, but some experiments take a full 24 hours to run. Luckily I don’t need to stay in the lab that whole time though! We have a machine called a “spectrophotometer” (which means, a many-wavelengths light measurer), which shines a light on the bacteria to see how many there are in the liquid broth they are growing in. The spectrophotometer is programmable so that I can tell it to measure my bacteria every 5 minutes for as long as I want!

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