Bread Mold Everywhere

• Take five cotton balls and wipe each cotton ball in a different location within the home such as your bedroom, the kitchen and bathroom. Wipe the dirty end of the cotton ball on individual slices of bread. Place a few drops of water on the bread and seal in plastic sandwich bags. Check on the bags after a few days. Observe that mold has grown on all the pieces of bread during this time. Take notes on any visual differences, such as the amount, color or other variations among the bread slices.
  
  

Temperature and Mold

• Collect mold spores on cotton balls and wipe them on slices of bread with water and seal in plastic bags. Each bag needs to be stored at different temperatures. Place one piece of bread in the freezer, one in the refrigerator, keep one at room temperature and place additional bags in incubators with higher constant temperatures. Monitor the growth of the molds over a period of a week. Determine at what temperature points mold did not grow and what temperature the most mold grew.
  
  

Bread Type

• Test to see if different types of bread develop and grow mold at different rates. Use bread such as white, wheat, potato and rye for the experiment. Collect mold using a cotton ball, wipe it on each slice of bread with water and seal. Observe the breads daily and record results. Items to look for include which bread showed signs of mold first, the colors of the mold present on each bread and the amount of mold grown over the course of the experiment.
  
  

Light

• Test to see if molds grow better in the presence of light or not. Use the cotton ball method to add mold spores to the bread. Store one bag in complete darkness, create a number of bags that are exposed to light for different amounts of time such as 4, 8 and 12 hours daily. One bag should be kept in light 24 hours a day. Observe the bags daily to see if the amount of light each bag receives affects the amount of mold that grows.