Grubby science

Parents always tell their kids that it is very important to keep their rooms tidy and clean. But dirt isn’t always a bad thing, just look at the example of Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, an antibiotic. This famous scientist left his lab to celebrate his holidays, leaving on his desk a mess of notes, perished foods and… an open petri plate covered with bacterial colonies.

While Fleming was enjoying his trip, a little mold, called Penicillium, got the chance to develop on his desk and began to grow on the petri dish, accompanying the bacteria. When the lucky man came back from his holidays, he looked at his plate and observed that most of his cultivated bacteria had disappeared. This was the moment when Alexander Fleming concluded that the mold produced an antibiotic and so the penicillin was born.