Dispersal of motile bacteria from a plane layer.

The dispersal of an initially well-defined concentration of the motile bacterium Escherichia coli was measured under nonchemotactic conditions. The distribution of bacteria along a glass observation cell was measured by recording the intensity of light scattered by the organisms. For comparison, the diffusion of fluorescein was also measured by determining the distribution of fluorescence throughout the observation cell. The dispersal of bacteria from a plane layer, under nonchemotactic conditions, can be adequately described by the Gaussian solution of the diffusion equation.