My Presentation Speech
2-3 Minutes Long

Have any of you been to these local and popular cafes in Howick? Cafe A, Cafe B and Cafe C? These are the cafes that I chose for my Science Fair.

My main question was "Which cafe in Howick Village has the cleanest eating facilities"? I thought that this was a really important question that would affect our vison towards hygiene at restaurants. I'm sure that all of you have accidentally dropped a piece of cutlery or even food on the table. Think of the many germs and dirt that may have transferred from the table, onto your cutlery, and into your mouth.

I predicted that Cafe A would be the dirtiest, because I observed that 3 tables were left uncleaned when customers left. I also noticed that the tables were also visibly dirty as well. Cafe B had 5 tables left, but 1 of those were wiped. Cafe C had 3 tables left uncleaned.

I tested my hypothesis by using an agar plate test. I used petri dishes with agar, a seaweed derivative that is a nutrient for bacteria. I used sterile cotton tips to carefully wipe a swab off each cafe table. I then rubbed that swab into the agar and closed the lids. The petri dishes then lived in my cupboard for 2 weeks and I recorded any observations each day.

It was very exciting, because on Day 5, Cafe A showed signs of greeny black mould patches, in 2 areas. Later, on the very last few days of Cafe C's testing, the same signs occurred. There was nothing for Cafe B though.

I kept my experiment a fair test by tested each restaurant twice and keeping a Control petri dish in for the same amount of time as the others. I consistently washed and sanitized my hands throughout the experiment, and kept gloves on most of the time.

It all came down to the final conclusion of bacteria. I had grown a lot, considering that you have to have millions of colonies to even be able to see them with the human eye! My hypothesis was both incorrect and correct, because Cafe C turned out to be the dirtiest, with 6 patches of gross bacteria, and Cafe B with none.