Answer: C) Not all scientific knowledge begins with an experiment
Explanation:
Fleming's lab was very messy, and one day when he is back from his vacations, he noticed that a colony of a fungus had grown as a contaminant on one of the Petri dishes sown with a bacteria called <em>Staphylococcus aureus</em>. Fleming observed a bacterial lysis, which means the death of the bacteria.
<u>The dishes got contaminated by Penicillium</u>, which is a mold that produces a an antibacterial substance, called penicillin. <u>This is an antibiotic that attacks a wide range of bacteria.</u>
At first, his findings were underestimated and he was not able to isolate this penicillin. But in 1940, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain found out that <u>this antibiotic could be used as a therapeutic agent to fight bacteria.</u>
So, in this case the discovery of penicillin was accidental, without planning a specific experiment.