Why These 'Cool Images' May Send You Scurrying For Disinfectant!
Language
Reading Level
Listen to Article
At first glance, these pictures seem a little intriguing and even appear cool to some of you. However, that opinion may change once you realize that the images are not some kind of modern art but instead, those of actual bacteria that thrive upon the touchscreens of all smart phones.
The photos are a result of a classroom experiment recently conducted by the students of England's University of Surrey for their Practical and Biomedical Bacteriology unit. They began by lifting an imprint off their smartphone screens and transferring it to bacterial growth Petri dishes.
Within three days, the students were rewarded for their efforts with many different kinds of 'cool images' - All belonging to the different bacterium that were happily thriving on their respective cell phones. The good news is that most of them were like the genus Micrococcus, a harmless bacteria that is commonly found on human skin.
A few however, did have the Staphylococcus aureus, the bacteria responsible for ailments like staph infections and food poisoning. But Dr. Simon, the professor that assigned the experiment, was not fazed by that either - That's because 20% of people are persistent carriers of this bacteria while over 60% carry it intermittently!
Another common thing found was bacteria from things the owners had recently touched. For example, one Petri dish featured a dense colony of Bacillus mycoldes - A bacteria that normally thrive in soil, which led the professor to rightfully conclude that the owner of the cellphone had recently been gardening or somehow come in contact with mud. Not surprisingly, touchscreen phones harbored more bacteria than ones with keypads - Time to revert to good old flip phones again?
Resources: Dailymail.co.uk, gizmag.com
Cite Article
Learn Keywords in this Article
399 Comments
- ariana0613over 12 yearsi know i watched a video in science class about this there is a lot of bacteria on cell phones
- Abbyover 12 yearsEWW so cleaning my iphone everyday now O_O
- Mangos rock over 12 yearsPretty cool and probably smells a lot better than ampicillin+kanamycin+this gooey liquid in a petri dish( it smells awful, I mean awful). I am still gonna clean my iPhone screen though.
- guest3000over 12 yearsPhone meet clean towel clean towel meet phone
- veeniedogover 12 yearsI'm totally going to clean my phone now!eww!!!
- peace10over 12 yearsbacteria is cool
- pop4everover 12 yearsI am totally cleaning my phone now!
- hayeong2001over 12 yearsOMG!
- Kristoferover 12 yearsThe pictures are actually bacteria!
- awesomeperson24over 12 yearsEWWW OMG!!! That is the most DISGUSTING picture I have ever seen!!!!! OMG!!!!