It was hypothesised that the antibiotics would be more efficient at preventing e coli growth at a pH of 7 as extreme alkaline or acidic solutions would inhibit the ability of the antibiotic to work due to the data from Provet. The results gathered from the experiment did not support the hypothesis as all of the antibiotics that had an effect (ampicillin, chloramphenicol, streptomycin and tetracycline) appeared to work better at acidic and alkaline levels.
When discussing the results themselves, each graph has a parabolic trendline displaying that effectiveness increases as the pH is increased/decreased. Tetracycline and streptomycin appear to be the most effective out of the six antibiotics tested while sulphatriad and penicillin G had no effect …show more content…
When comparing and contrasting these results to that of Andrew Shilling, Southern Biological and Expression Technologies, a correlation of data is shown. However, there is a conflict of data between the experiment conducted and Provet. Southern Biological concluded with their experiment that sulphatriad and penicillin G had no effect on e coli which is also supported by the results gathered from this experiment. Expression Technology and Shilling’s data suggested that e coli grows equally as well from pH levels 6, 7 and 8 which is further supported by the experiment as there was equal growth between these pH’s without antibiotics. Through this, it is suggested that there is a relation between pH and antibiotics. As for Provet, their data implied that the antibiotics’ effectiveness were in small ranges however, the data from this experiment did not show this trend but rather the opposite. …show more content…
Such can be proven by the clear circles in the centre of the agar plates in the Appendix. Due to these spreaders, a full farm could not be achieved possibly changing the results in some way. Observational error also could have occurred with the measuring of the zone of inhibition altering the results. It would be recommended that spreaders that cover the entire the agar plate be used in order to create a full farm of bacteria. One issue with the experimental design was the use of the buffer solutions. The issue was that while the pH was changed further chemicals were added into the agar plate which could have been the source of the results. Thus, it would be recommended to innovate other ways to change the pH with chemicals that would not directly affect the e coli in order to improve reliability of the results. As for accuracy, the results do correlate with the secondary sources apart from Provet which overall displays a reasonably high level of accuracy. It could also be said that the results are reliable and demonstrate precision due to the small range of results over the amount of replications. Despite this, further testing would be recommended due to the anomaly and overall reliability. When taking the errors and recommendations into account, the experiment and results can be considered somewhat valid. Another reason for this was the lack of