Q&A for How to Measure Bacterial Growth

It helps in nature, medicine and various other industries. In nature, bacteria help to fix nitrogen in plants and enhance soil fertility, digestion of cellulose and sewage treatment. In medicine, they use bacteria to manufacture drugs and vitamin supplements. Other industries use bacteria for baking, preparation of alcoholic drinks, making of cheese and yogurt and tanning of hides and skin.

The unit of cell number depends on the used method. If the bacteria are counted on a growth plate, the most used unit of cell number is colony forming units per milliliter (cfu / ml). If measured by turbidity, there is no unit unless the cfu / ml could be calculated by the measurement of control probes.

Bacteria is an extremely dynamic organism, and it grows exponentially in short periods of time. If you cannot detect motion or growth for a very extended period of time, and/or if the environment it's put in is hostile to the specific strain of bacteria, then it probably has died.

There is no plant that can measure bacteria, only modern devices can detect bacteria in general, let alone their growth.