How clean are your hands?

By Bebhinn, Grace and Siobhán

Our project.

For our project we wish to investigate the importance of washing your hands. To do this we have planned to do a number of different things.

The first thing that we have planned to do is to place Vaseline on our hands and to go around the science lab as normal touching different things and looking at our hand prints under a UV light. This is to show people where they could be spreading the germs if they don’t wash their hands properly.

Another thing that we have planned to do it take swabs form 4 different things that are commonly touched in the science lab. We are then going to make agar and place our swabs on these dishes. Place them in an incubator and leave for about a week. Then come back and check them to see what bacteria have grown on the different swabs.

The different things that we have planned to do will show people how important it is to wash their hands so that they can help prevent the spread of germs and bacteria.

What we did. To do our project we done a number of things. The first thing that we wanted to do was to show people how fast

germs can spread. To do this we used Vaseline and a UV light and went around the

science lab as normal. Then we made agar and we took swabs of the most commonly

touched things in the science lab and put them in the incubator and gave them a chance for any bacteria to grow.

What we found. This is what we found after we done the first part of our

experienment. We found that germs can spread to many different places very quick

and people do not even realise it happening.

This is what we found after we done the second part of the experinemet.

This is what some of the agar dishes looked like before we put them in the incubator . Nothing had grown in the agar dishes at this stage.

This is what some of the agar dishes looked like after we left them for a week in the incubator.

The bacteria we found on a chair.

The bacteria we found on a door handle.

The bacteria we found on a sink.

The bacteria we found on a table.

Conclusion. We found that from the photos that we took of the agar dishes that

chair no.2 and table no.2 carry a lot of bacteria on them.

We found that the everyday surfaces that we touch are full of germs and bacteria and most people don't even realise when they are spreading the germs around.