How does Bacteria grow?
By culturing bacteria, it is known that there are three basic stages to the reproduction of bacteria. The first is the lag phase where basically, the bacteria is relaxing, not really making any notable action. It’s mostly adapting and preparing to live (it’s in a new home; it has to make arrangements). This phase depends if it’s healthy or not (if a sample is taken from Antarctic glaciers, it probably wouldn’t be as healthy opposed to a swab from a normally used paper towel dispenser). After the bacteria has settled, it will start to grow rapidly either throughout the petri dish or one big colony. The growth is exponential, meaning that if there were 2 bacteria at the end of the lag phase, it would be 4 the next day, 8 the day after that, etc. However, this rapid growth can not continue in these closed conditions of the petri dish. So, eventually nutrients deteriorate (die out). Surroundings start to affect bacteria to the point where the number of bacteria remains constant (the same number of bacteria die as they reproduce). Eventually, the environment depletes and the bacteria begins to die, one by one.