Wikijunior:Big Book of Fun Science Experiments/Grow your own fungi

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What you will need: two slices of white bread, some water, two clear polythene bag.

what you 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 in to another bag. Your bread should have fungi growing on it, and don't try to eat this bread after the experiment!!!

[edit] 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 and reproduce asexually (meaning that they don't need to have a member of the opposite sex to reproduce) 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.)