Draft

In conclusion, this experiment was able to obtain CFU/ml values for one dilution of E.

coli. There were approximately 8.9x104 CFU/ml of E. coli in one ml of the 10-2 dilution. This

number was obtained using The 10-1 dilution produced to many colonies to count, making

obtaining a CFU/ml value impossible. The other dilutions did not produce more than 30 colonies,

possibly due to a mistake in the dilution process. Another explanation for this could be that when

the dilutions were prepared, the aliquots may have had a lower CFU/ml than other aliquots by

random chance. This experiment showed that using viable counts is a reliable and effective way

to count the number of bacteria in an inoculated sample.