Agar plate

Imagine you have a little plate that looks like a round dish. This dish is special and is called an agar plate. It's made of a jelly-like substance called agar, which comes from seaweed! Scientists use agar because it's like a blank canvas for growing things like bacteria and fungi.

When you want to grow something on an agar plate, you first have to prepare it by heating it up and adding some special ingredients to make it the perfect environment for the things you want to grow. Once the agar is cooled and solidified, it's ready to use.

To grow something on the agar plate, you take a tiny bit of whatever you want to grow (like a little drop of saliva or a speck of dirt) and apply it to the surface of the agar using a special tool called a loop. Then you carefully put the plate in a place that is warm and dark, like a warm closet.

After a day or two, you can see the things that started growing on the agar plate! Sometimes they look like little colored spots or fuzzy patches. Scientists can use this information to learn more about the things that grow around us, like the good bacteria that help keep us healthy, or the bad bacteria that can make us sick.