On Day 8 we observed the new growth on the agar plates and wrote down our observations. The bacterial colonies varied from several different colours, shapes and sizes which you can see in the image below. To see the individual bacteria we went through a procedure which involved using an inoculation loop to remove a chosen spot and adding it to a glass plate. A purple dye was added to see the bacteria better when they went under the microscope. As we analysed the plates we looked for homogeneous patterns and identified many different bacteria. They ranged from tiny dots all clustered together which are known as staphylococci, to squiggly, worm-like lines all spaced out which are known as streptococci.
