Station 4: Grow your own microbes

One of the most popular activities of the shop! Visitors swabbed parts of their body onto agar plates to identify the invisible micro-organisms thriving in those locations, and they were given a specific code. We took these plates away, incubated them in our laboratory at Cardiff University, and grew up whatever microbes were present in those samples.

Thousands of photographs of what we grew were taken and posted online, so all visitors could follow up on what micro-organisms were present. You can find here examples of what we found on people’s tongues, teeth, hands and feet, and in their ears, noses, arm pits and belly buttons. Some were just interesting, others really yucky!