Survivor Curves of Bacteria Exposed to Surface-active Agents.

Reports on bacterial death studies since the basic work of Kronig and Paul (1896) have generally recognized that the death process of bacteria exposed to unfavorable environmental conditions follows a uniform and consistent course. The constancy of the rate of death is the outstanding feature; the term, "constant death rate," means that the number of bacteria that die per time unit is a constant percentage of the number of living organisms at the beginning of this time unit (Rahn, 1945). The order of death of organisms may be determined by computation of the value of the death rate constant, K, in the formula: