Kochs Postulates

Aim: to use Kochs Postulates to determine that particular organism cause particular
disease.

Hypothesis: that the clean fruit, will get infected from moulded fruit. Equipment:
- Supplied mouldy fruit. This piece of fruit happened to be a mandarin. It was infected and the appearance was fury and mouldy. - 2 fresh mandarins. - Plastic chopping board - Scalpel - Gloves - 2 foam cups. - A permanent marker. - Microscope - Cover slip - Slide - Lamp

Method
1. Prepare all necessary equipment 2. Half peel one mandarin and cut a small segment out of the other. 3. While wearing gloves, rub the infected mandarin on both the peeled mandarin and the segment. 4. Place the peeled mandarin and the mandarin segment in different cups. 5. Label the cups. 6. Place cup in an area where the temperature is around 35 degrees. 7. After four days observe mandarin, you will hopefully see a type of bacteria grown on the fruit. 8. Set up microscope and the lamp.

9. Using a clean scalpel, smear a small amount of mould onto a clean slide. 10. Place a drop of water onto the mould that is on the slide. 11. Place a cover slip on top of the mould. 12. Then place the slide onto the microscope. 13. Making sure that the objective lens is on the lowest option. Slowly move the eye piece up and down on till the microorganisms came into focus and can be viewed. 14. Observe and draw what can be seen.

Risk assessment:
Indentify: Assess: Control: May get sick from infected mandarin May cut yourself with the scalpel Low risk Wear gloves before handling infected mandarin. Take care when using scalpel, making sure that you are cutting away from yourself

Results:

Discussion:
The Kochs Postulates theory relates to this experiment very well. The Kochs Postulates theory states that for something clean to become infected, something contaminated must come into contact with it. As the results show that the clean fruit did get infected from the contaminated fruit. This experiment shows how easy disease and infection can spread. Over all I think that this experiment worked really well, if I had to adjust the experiment in any way possible I would a have left the clean fruit that got infected a couple of days longer so that the mould would grow more. There were three variables in this experiment: Independent (the amount of infection that crossed over), dependant (the growth of mould) and the controlled variable (keeping the fruit in the same temperature for the same amount of days)

Conclusion:
Overall my hypothesis was correct as the clean fruit did get mouldy from the infected fruit.