Listerine Lab Report

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Jennifer Stewart March 8, 2013 Biology 105 Lab Report- Listerine Experiment Professor Jakubowski Examination of the Effectiveness of Listerine Mouthwash in Killing Bacteria Abstract Listerine Antiseptic Mouthwash claims to fight plaque, gingivitis, and bad breath germs, by rinsing the mouthwash in one’s mouth every twelve hours. A class of about twenty-five students conveyed an experiment to test if Listerine would, in fact, kill 99% of bacteria in one’s mouth over a period of 5 minutes. The results showed that the number of colonies on the plates decreased more than 50% after five minutes of waiting for the mouthwash to work. Introduction The number of bacteria on one human’s mouth is greater than the total number of people who lived on this earth. Many mouthwash companies all claim that their product will kill 99.9% of germs every use. Since there wasn’t enough time to test out every brand of mouthwash, Listerine was the only mouthwash tested. The four active ingredients in Listerine are: Eucalyptol (0.092%), Menthol (0.024%), Methyl Salicylate (0.060%), and Thymol (0.064%) (Publix Supermarkets, 2012). The purposes of these ingredients are for antigingivitis and antiplaque. The use for Listerine is for “helping control plaque that lead to gingivitis”. Listerine is also used to “rapidly penetrate the bioform (another word for plaque) to kill plaque and gingivitis germs” (McNeil-PPC Inc, 2013). The result that was expected was that the bacteria will drastically immediately after rinsing with Listerine, and after about five minutes, the bacteria will start to form again. Materials and Methods This experiment, conducted on February 20, 2013, requited each group to have four sterile plates, four clean volumetric medicine cups, eight sterile pipettes, six sterile swabs, and of course, one medicine cup filled with 20 mL of Listerine. Notice how
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