Centrifugal damage has been known to alter bacterial cell surface properties and interior structures, including DNA. Very few studies exist on bacterial damage caused by centrifugation because of the difficulty in relating centrifugation speed and container geometry to the damage caused. Here, we provide a simple, versatile method of analysis for describing the compaction of bacteria during centrifugation based on a proposed centrifugation coefficient, C. Values of C can be related to different bacterial cell surface properties. Changing the geometry of the centrifugation container or centrifugation speeds changed the value of C significantly. Initial deposition rates of Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 12600 to a glass surface decayed exponentially from 4,217 to 1,478 cm ؊2 s ؊1 with increasing C, while the proportion of staphylococci with a zeta potential of around ؊15 mV decreased from 97 to 58%. These surface-sensitive parameters were used independently to derive a critical centrifugation coefficient (0.040), above which centrifugation was considered to impact the outcome of surface-sensitive experiments due to cell surface damage. The critical centrifugation coefficient could successfully predict staphylococcal cell surface damage, i.e., a significant change in initial deposition rate or zeta potential distribution, in 84% of all cases included here, whereas the centrifugation speed could predict damage in only 58% of all cases. Moreover, controlling the centrifugation coefficient within narrow limits over a series of experiments yielded 43% smaller standard deviations in initial staphylococcal deposition rates than with centrifugation at fixed speeds for replicate experiments. C entrifugation is a common laboratory practice used for harvesting planktonic bacteria. For harvesting, a wide variety of forces (roughly ranging from 1,000 to 12,000 ϫ g) (1, 10-12) is used without mentioning a reason for a particular choice. Centrifugation in essence involves compacting bacteria into a pellet, causing collisions against each other that result in shear forces on the bacterial cell surface, which may easily lead to cell surface damage with a potential effect on the outcome of surface-sensitive experiments. Many experimental protocols choose high centrifugation speeds to collect as many bacteria as possible while assuming that it does not cause any bacterial cell damage or cell death (4, 10). However, cell surface damage during bacterial centrifugation at 15,000 ϫ g was demonstrated to cause significant reductions in Escherichia coli viability compared to centrifugation at 5,000 ϫ g, while little effect was detected on the viability of Psychrobacter sp. strain SW8 or Staphylococcus epidermidis (9). Moreover, bacterial cell surface damage can be expected to affect surface-sensitive phenomena, such as their adhesion to surfaces. Chemical and physical surface damage to Pseudomonas aeruginosa, for instance, yielded lower initial deposition rates to substratum surfaces than were observed for undamaged bacteria (2). In general, ...