The story starts with a can of pop. Like many of us, Sam enjoys a nice, cold beverage every once in awhile, but Sam's mom always told him he had to put his can back in the fridge after he opened it, or else bacteria would get in and grow. While most of us would have just done what mom told us, Sam decided to test her hypothesis. With his mom's help, he set up a series of experiments to see whether bacteria really would grow in pop left out on the counter. Last week Sam presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
Leftover pop is perfectly safe, probably because it's too acidic for any bacteria to survive.
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