Final answer:
A Randomized controlled trial would be the most appropriate experimental design to test the hypothesis about the effects of full dosage antibiotics on bacteria. It should include both a control and an experimental group, with the former receiving no treatment or a placebo. The experiment should be blinded and sampling times standardized.
Step-by-step explanation:
Experimental Design for Antibiotic Effectiveness Hypothesis
To test the hypothesis 'If antibiotics are applied in full dosage to a bacteria, then the bacteria will be killed', one would ideally conduct a controlled experiment. This involves the creation of two groups: an experimental group that receives the full dosage of antibiotics, and a control group that does not receive the antibiotics. The control group could either receive no treatment or a placebo treatment that appears identical to the antibiotic treatment but has no therapeutic effect.
Standardized cell suspensions of the bacteria in question would be used, and these would be exposed to the antibiotic in a laboratory setting, typically with an agar plate and a filter paper disk saturated with the antibiotic, as seen in the Kirby-Bauer assay. The presence of a zone of inhibition would suggest antibiotic effectiveness.
To ensure the difference in outcomes between the two groups is due to the antibiotic treatment, experimental sampling times should be carefully designed and standardized, perhaps during different growth intervals of interest. This design would help eliminate lurking variables. Moreover, to avoid biased results, the experiment should be blinded whenever possible, meaning that neither the subjects (in the case of an in vivo study) nor the researcher knows which group is receiving the treatment versus the control.
The correct choice for the experimental design from the given options is Randomized controlled trial (b), as it includes both an experimental group and a control group, is randomized to eliminate bias, and employs an explicit intervention (the full dose of antibiotics).