What is the the effect of Different Types of Milk Containers on the Growth rate of bacteria?

[Uncle Al]

CJ wrote:
> 
> Well I am a 7th grade student and my science fair project title is "What is
> the the effect of Different Types of Milk Containers on the Growth rate of
> bacteria?"  Basically this is the age old question what is better the paper
> or plastic carton?   I am doing research in the library and my brother told
> me that newsgroups are quite helpful.  I decided to ask for any hints,
> tips, ( how would you do the experiment? ), ( good topics to look up )
> etc...  Please send all responses to missydog at bright.net

There are glass milk bottles, waxed cardboard, polyethylene film bonded
to cardboard, and polyethylene jugs.  The bugaboo about plastic jugs was
that they let in ultraviolet light from fluorescent lamps, which
progressively destroys Vitamin D.  Then some naughty news station did a
study on Vitamin D content of milk and found it was all over the map
because oily Vitamin D and watery (especially the reduced fat
atrocities) milk are immiscible.  Environmentalists do not lust after
statistical process control engineering sanctions.  The noise about
protecting the innocent from the heinous effects of notional, fictive,
and nugatory UV degradation vanished.

There are also gamma radiation-sterilized milk packs which are good
without refrigeration essentially forever or until oxygen permeation
makes it taste Heart-Smart.

Oh yeah, back to bugs.  It is clear that different surfaces will please
and displease different bugs differently, both from a standpoint of
native surface interaction and from chemical species differentially
surface adsorbed from the milk.  You would need a standard culture of
typically spoiled milk, control milk, a selection of surfaces, aseptic
technique, and a way to quantitatively identify milk spoilage - rate and
degree.  It would also be nice to quantify the degree of bacterial
colonization of the different surfaces, the identity of the bugs, and
the number of bacteria thereupon.

The USDA (Department of Agriculture) has several milk Web pages.  I
pulled some excellent statistics for my essay on intergalactic butterfat
extortion rings (the Earth pays up or they steal our sun).  Also try
search engines.  There is a searchable clickable resource of about 300
links in my Web page.

When push comes to shove, the gallon polyethylene milk jug is a
fantastic triumph of technology over Luddites.

-- 
Uncle Al Schwartz
UncleAl0 at ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
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