Grow your own fungi
What you will need: two slices of white bread, some water, two clear polythene bags.
what to do:
1: Pour some water (but not all of it) onto the bread, so it is slightly damp.
2: Put one slice bread into a bag, seal it tightly, and leave in a warm place for 2-3 days
3:Put the other slice of bread into another bag and leave it in the light.
Both slices of bread should have fungi growing on it. (Don’t try to eat this bread after the experiment!!!)
Principle
The “stuff” on your piece of bread should be colonies of fungi. Fungi is a type of organism, like plants or animals. However it reproduces in a unique way. It releases tiny spores into the environment in uncountable numbers. If the spores find a place with water, air and a food source, they will grow and release their own spores.
Fungi are unique in many other ways. They “eat” food as their primary way to attain energy, like animals, however they cannot move, like plants. Early scientists were quite confused by them, grouping them with plants. However, the definition of plants changed to involve photo-synthesis (a process plants go through to turn water and carbon dioxide to sugar). Fungi don’t go through photo-synthesis, so they were placed in their own group, called a kingdom.
Do note, that eating this piece of bread is ill-advised and dangerous. Fungi can cause major intestinal issues, and also thriving on this bread are bacteria, which cause various diseases and are, in very rare occasions, potentially deadly. (Also, one could only assume, it doesn’t taste good.)
Written for younger readers
Grow your own fungi, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: Big Book of Fun Science Experiments
What you will need: two slices of white bread, some water, two clear polythene bags.
what to do:
1: Pour some water (but not all of it) onto the bread, so it is slightly damp.
2: Put one slice bread into a bag, seal it tightly, and leave in a warm place for 2-3 days
3:Put the other slice of bread into another bag and leave it in the light.
Both slices of bread should have fungi growing on it. (Don’t try to eat this bread after the experiment!!!)
The “stuff” on your piece of bread should be colonies of fungi. Fungi is a type of organism, like plants or animals. However it reproduces in a unique way. It releases tiny spores into the environment in uncountable numbers. If the spores find a place with water, air and a food source, they will grow and release their own spores.
Fungi are unique in many other ways. They “eat” food as their primary way to attain energy, like animals, however they cannot move, like plants. Early scientists were quite confused by them, grouping them with plants. However, the definition of plants changed to involve photo-synthesis (a process plants go through to turn water and carbon dioxide to sugar). Fungi don’t go through photo-synthesis, so they were placed in their own group, called a kingdom.
Do note, that eating this piece of bread is ill-advised and dangerous. Fungi can cause major intestinal issues, and also thriving on this bread are bacteria, which cause various diseases and are, in very rare occasions, potentially deadly. (Also, one could only assume, it doesn’t taste good.)
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Grow your own fungi” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.