Mold Science Fair Project Ideas

Choosing a science fair project can seem hard when you have so many from which to choose. A popular choice for young students involves completing a project on mold. With a little research and help from parents, when needed, mold projects are easy to complete and fun if you have an interest in this sometimes-stinky form of science.

For this science project, you set out to answer the question, "Which food will mold grow on faster: bread, milk, bananas or cheese?" While completing the project, you will discover how quickly certain foods spoil and grow mold when you do not properly store them, such as placing them in a refrigerator. FREEScienceFairProject.com recommends keeping all of the foods fresh when you start the experiment and then place them into separate dishes inside of a single cabinet in order to control the temperature affecting the food. You will watch over the food for a number of days, recording the results as you go along until the final food has molded. Then analyze your data and create your final report for the science project, telling which of the four foods grew mold the fastest.

This project sets out to discover the answer to the question, "What are the best conditions for mold growth?" Place slices of fresh bread into three different conditions—hot and moist, warm and moist, and cold and moist—to see which allows mold to grow. The mold science project, shared by Crystal Clear Science Fair Projects, requires more attention and detail to complete, using items such as a microscope and specimen staining kit to gather the data needed to produce the project's conclusion. Data analyzed at the end of the project includes determining what type of mold grew and which conditions produced the most molds.

For those wishing to embark on a more advanced science project about mold, cheese provides a great opportunity for identifying different molds and determining the differences between them. Students can answer the question, "Is the rate of mold growth affected on cheese by the variety of mold that has grown?" Students should allow a cheese, such as cheddar, to mold, and then extract the mold from the cheese, and the mold from a soft cheese such as blue vein cheese. Then place the mold of two separate pieces of a control cheese (Parmesan, mozzarella) and then observe them for a period of time chosen by the student. The student should note the rate of growth of the two separate molds, whether any new varieties of molds have presented themselves and what effect the molds have had on the cheese.