, FeyzioÄŸlu, B., Ozdemir, M., & Baysal, B., 2008). This article showed that the keyboard and mouse could be reservoirs of bacteria. Additionally, a study done by an undergraduate student from Spring Arbor University supported the hypothesis that there is a direct correlation between the estimated concentration of bacteria discovered by sampling PC keyboards and the overall health of the user determined by a general health survey ² (Ward, 2013). This study showed that if a computer has a relatively high concentration of bacteria, the health of the user is at danger. The experimenters' hypothesis was that if a part was used more often, than it would have more bacteria than the part that were used less often. The independent variable was the approximate frequency of use. The dependent variable was the amount of bacteria colonies formed in the petri dishes. The control group was the sample collected from the air. The experimental group was the different samples from various parts of a PC. The controls were that the petri dished and inoculating loops were the same size and same shape. Also, each sampling period was 15 seconds, and the petri dishes were kept in the same incubator at the same constant temperature. The experimenters predicted that the sample collected from the keyboard and touchpad would have more bacteria colonies than the samples from the speaker and the screen.
Materials & Methods.
Materials: 5 sterilized petri dishes with agar (bacterial food), 5 inoculating loops, 1 MacBook Pro (a type of personal computer; provided by the experimenter), tape (to seal the lid and tape the five dishes together), 1 sharpie, 1 IPhone (to time the swab), and 1 incubator with a constant temperature of 38 degree Celsius. .
Methods: .
1. Take out the MacBook Pro.
2. Swab the bottom left corner of the screen (group 1), the "wersdf " area of the keyboard (group 2), the bottom right ¼ of the touchpad (group 3), the speaker of the PC/speaker (group 4), and the air (group 5, control group) with 5 separate inoculating loops.
