Can bacteria be measured?

yes with the aid of an electron microscope

Can bacteria be measured?
Yes, as can just about anything else in the universe. Bacteria are commonly measured in very small units of measurement, some in the Angstrom units, others in the various minute measurements in the metric or avoirdupois measurement systems. Bacteria can also be measured by their weight and density, just as you or I could.
Reply:In what sense are you measuring them? Mass, dimensions, number in a population?


As for population counts, yes, there are methods of doing this. One is called a spread-plate, in which you dilute a sample on a Petri dish and count the numer of colonies (each colony arises from a single bacterium).


Some bacteria are large and can be viewed with microscopes (even a light microscope!) if you want to measure size. Even smaller bacteria can be killed and then observed under more powerful scopes (electron, etc).


You can also estimate the number of bacteria if you know the rate at which they convert certain metabolites. Take a sample, add the substrate and then measure the product after a given period. Divide this amount by the rate to find how many bacteria there are.