The young girl, Jasmine Roberts of New Tampa, set out on her project with a simple premise. "My hypothesis was that the fast food restaurants ice would contain more bacteria that the fast food restaurants toilet water", she said.
To test her theory Jasmine visited five fast food restaurants near the University of South Florida. She collected ice samples from self-service dispensers inside the restaurants, as well as ice from drinks served through drive-through windows. To collect the toilet water, she flushed the toilet once at each restaurant, and used sterile gloves to gather samples.
She then placed the samples into sterile containers and had the samples from each restaurant tested at a lab.
What did she find? She found that 70% of the time, the ice from the fast food restaurant's contain more bacteria than the fast food restaurant's toilet water! And even more suprising, of the bacteria found in the ice, three out of the five restaurants tested positive for fecal coliform or E. coli, organisms that come from the feces of warm-blooded animals.
Jasime won the school's science fair with the project, and hopes to win the top prize at a regional science and engineering fair.
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