In the picture you can see the effect of different disinfectants. A plate with nutritional agar was covered in E. Coli bacteria and little pieces of paper soaked in disinfectants were put in four sectors on the plate.
Upper left is just water, upper right 2% formaldehyde, lower left 70% ethanol and lower right 10% Sagrotan which is a hand disinfectant.
The plate was then left in an incubator to grow.
As you can see, there are clear circles around all papers that weren’t soaked in water. That is the area bacteria weren’t able to grow. The bigger the circle, the more effective the disinfectant.
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Picture was taken by me