dirty bread experiment

RAISING BRAIN

Secular Learning Enrichment Center & Microschool

Dirty hands bread experiment.

This was a really neat experiment to do to learn about germs and how they spread! It was really interesting and GROSS at the same time! If you have little ones that hate washing their hands, this experiment is a great visual aid as to why it is important!

Here is what you will need:

Start with three pieces of bread – one will be the control , one will collect unseen stuff (bacteria, viruses, mold spores) from dirty hands, and one will collect that stuff from clean hands. For this experiment, we picked bakery fresh bread that had no preservatives, which would slow down the mold formation.

Did you say mold? That’s right. Throughout this experiment, we will be growing mold spores on each piece of bread. While mold spores aren’t a virus or bacteria (they’re actually fungi!), they are what we use in this experiment to show us just how dirty our hands can become throughout the day. According to the CDC, mold is everywhere , even in the air and on common area surfaces. Remember, illness causing bacteria and viruses are also found on common surfaces that we touch throughout the day, so by the end of this experiment, we’ll be able to see just how much gross particles are on dirty and clean hands. Now, let’s get back to the experiment!

The first piece of bread will be your control, which you’ll place in a sandwich bag using plastic gloves later on in the experiment. If you've forgotten a few things from science class, a control is something that is used as a standard comparison to check the results of the experiment. In this case, we want to see the pace and types of mold that grow on a piece of bread that was not exposed to skin contact as compared to the other pieces of bread that were touched with clean and dirty hands.

The next piece of bread will be the one you touch with dirty hands. Make sure to not wash your hands for a few hours before you touch this piece of bread – and by all means, touch the bread all over with your hands. We went a little further by touching things we thought would have the most germs, trash cans, door knobs, toilet, and sinks!

The last piece of bread will be the one you touch after you have thoroughly washed your hands.

Before placing each piece of bread in its own sandwich bag, spritz the bread with water from a misting bottle. If you remember from your high school science classes, mold needs water to grow and cannot survive without a source of water. In addition to water and moisture, warm temperatures, oxygen, and particular pH levels also create a favorable environment for mold growth. Once each slice is spritzed with water and placed in their bag, seal the bags tightly and label each piece accordingly.

Now for the best part, we wait. If you’re following along at home, take pictures now to mark Day One of your experiment.

For this experiment, we recommend checking in on your pieces of bread every other day for more apparent results. When Day Three came around, we had yet to notice any visible growth. Day Five was a different story.

By the time day ten rolled around, we noticed mold growing on the dirty hands sample. We used white bread, which was probably why it wasn't a huge amount of mold as compared to the original experiment (the bleaching process during baking make it a little more difficult for germs / mold to thrive. )

We also used a "Germ Mapping" and "My predictions" journal worksheet to really explore germs, open discussion and record our hypothesis, and results.

Here is a great video we watched by Scishow Kids on youtube:

In the end, we have a much better appreciation for hand washing :) This is a perfect back to school activity!

Reference link: https://www.medexpress.com/blog/better-health/why-you-need-to-wash-your-hands.html

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Moldy Bread Science Experiment Is a Gross Reminder of How Many Germs Are on Our Hands

Have you ever wondered how many germs are lurking on your laptop? Or what happens when you don’t wash your hands? Educators Jaralee Metcalf and Dayna Robertson conducted an experiment, found through the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital website, that will open your eyes to just how much bacteria is on your hands and devices if left uncleaned.

The experiment uses sliced bread to illustrate the accumulation of germs, and the teachers used five pieces to each represent a different phase of cleanliness. One slice (the control) was left untouched. The other pieces were handled by all of the students in the following states: with unwashed hands, hands cleaned with a sanitizer, and hands washed with warm water and soap. In addition, a piece of bread was rubbed on all of their classroom laptops. They then left the bread alone for a few days to watch how the slices reacted.

The results of the experiment will remind you that you should always wash your hands. Aside from the control piece, the soap and water slice was the only piece of bread that had no mold on it. Even hand sanitizer, which we might think as a substitute for hand washing, showed evidence of mold. But the most disgusting outcomes—by far—were the bread slices touched by unwashed hands and wiped on the computers. The unwashed hands had yellowish mold spread across its surface with some green patches starting to show. The laptop slice was even worse and had turned almost completely green.

Metcalf and Robertson’s moldy bread exercise was documented in a series of photos and they now serve as a powerful classroom tool to remind their students to always wash their hands. And in Metcalf’s now-viral Facebook post , it is reminding people from around the world to do the same.

Educators Jaralee Metcalf and Dayna Robertson conducted a moldy bread science experiment that is a powerful reminder for you to always wash your hands.

The teachers and their students each touched four slices of bread in different states of cleanliness. One piece of bread was untouched and was the control for the experiment.

The bread touched with hands cleaned with soap and warm water didn't have any mold, but the other slices…

… were gross! Especially the piece that had been rubbed on classroom computers.

Jaralee Metcalf: Facebook | Instagram

My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Jaralee Metcalf.

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Mouldy bread activity - how clean are your hands?

What you’ll need:.

Three slices of bread (bakery or homemade bread works best – the fewer preservatives the better)

Instructions:

Label each of the three bags:

Place one slice of bread in the bag labelled ‘control’ without touching it. You can use clean tongs, or turn the resealable bag inside out and use it like a glove to get the slice inside.

Seal the bag.

Remove a second slice of bread and touch the bread with unwashed hands.

Place the bread in the bag labelled ‘dirty’ and seal it.

Wash your hands with soap and water. Take a third slice of bread and touch the bread with freshly-washed hands.

Place the bread in the bag labelled ‘clean’ and seal it.

Take all three sealed bags and put them in a cool, dry place. Look at the bread daily and write down your observations, but do not take the bread out of the bags.

Keep an eye on your experiment

In a few days, mould should start to appear.

Which slice of bread gets mouldy first? Which grows the most mould? Which grows the least?

If mould starts to appear, take a ruler and measure it and record your observations.

You can even draw a picture of the bread each day, or keep a photo diary by taking pictures of the bread daily to watch the changes over time.

Learning about hand hygiene

IMB’s Dr Alysha Elliott is discovering new drugs to treat antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

"Humans carry bacterial colonies from our heads to our toes and the vast majority of these are harmless or indeed beneficial to human health," Dr Elliott said, after conducting her own experiment on handwashing.

"However, washing our hands after using the toilet, changing a baby and before eating food is a simple, affordable and effective way to reduce the risk of picking up or passing on germs which could lead to infections such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and influenza."

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This genius bread experiment shows us the importance of washing our hands

The science teacher hopes the disturbing findings of the experiment will motivate parents to better understand the importance of hand-washing.

While we're all caught up in the festive high of the holiday season, a science teacher from Idaho is calling attention to another season that's in full swing at the moment: the flu season. A recent disturbing report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that several states in America—especially the Southern states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina—have seen a high rate of flu activity in between the months of October and December. Another report by the federal agency that during this period, there have been a whopping 2,600,000 to 3,700,000 flu illnesses nationwide.

CDC estimates so far this season there have been at least 2.6 million flu illnesses, 23,000 hospitalizations & 1,300 deaths from flu w/ activity mostly caused by influenza B. #IDtwitter @CDCgov 2019-2020 U.S. Flu Season: Preliminary Burden Estimates https://t.co/fXhnvR1N50 pic.twitter.com/fvgmX4MM1b — Duke Raleigh Antimicrobial Stewardship (@AbxDukeRaleigh) December 16, 2019

In light of these findings, it is important that we take adequate measures to stay well and healthy. This is exactly the message Jaralee Annice Metcalf hoped to send her students, friends, and family when she took to Facebook to share photos of a science project she did with her class. We did a science project in class this last month as flu season was starting. We took fresh bread and touched it. We did one slice untouched. One with unwashed hands. One with hand sanitizer. One with washed hands with warm water and soap. Then we decided to rub a piece on all our classroom Chromebooks , she wrote.

Metcalf and her students' discovery is a jolting wake-up call on the importance of properly sanitizing our hands at all times. Sharing photos of the different slices of bread displaying varying degrees of mold, she wrote, As somebody who is sick and tired of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Wash your hands! Remind your kids to wash their hands! And hand sanitizer is not an alternative to washing hands!! At all! This is so DISGUSTING!!!

The slice of bread that had been wiped on the classroom Chromebooks showed the highest rate of fungal activity, indicating just how dirty the surfaces were. Metcalf clarified that while the Chromebooks are usually properly sanitized, they weren't for this experiment to get a good idea of just how unsanitary the surfaces become after they've been used. All the students touched each piece (of the touched pieces). Results took 3-4 weeks because of preservatives. It was plain white bread. The control piece wasn't fresh when we took this picture. It just wasn't ever touched with naked hands and it was moved immediately from the bread bag to the zip lock baggie (every piece of bread here is from the same loaf and same day), she wrote online.

Metcalf added, They're freezer ziplock bags meant for raw meat and they're sealed tight. We do sanitize our Chromebooks, obviously, we did not do that for this experiment. I am in no way trying to make Google Chromebooks look bad, all laptops have germs, the amount is based on the person/people using them and not the brand . Speaking to Parents.com , she said, "If the bread had been exposed to air and moisture, the experiment may have gone faster. The breads that were very clearly exposed to different germs grew mold quicker. And ones touched by clean hands plus the soap and water ones were not exposed to the germs that cause the mold growth to quicken."

The science teacher hopes that the disturbing findings of her classroom experient will motivate parents to better understand the importance of hand-washing, which would come in quite handy if and when their child comes down with a bug. "Germs spread rapidly. And it doesn't matter how often they're told or how well they're taught to wash their hands, children won't always do it properly or enough," said Metcalf.

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Inverclyde Cluster Science

Clean vs. dirty hands bread experiment.

Set it up. This works best if you set up the experiment after a trip to the playground and before they wash their hands.
Ask child to “wipe” off his or her hands to get rid of visible dirt. (Most children believe this is clean enough!)
Help your child use the permanent marker to label three sandwich bags: “Clean Hands” “Dirty Hands” and “Control.”
Use the tongs to remove a slice of bread from the wrapped loaf and place in the sandwich bag marked “Control.”
Take another slice of bread and rub his or her hands thoroughly on both sides of the bread. He or she should put this slice into the bag labelled “Dirty Hands.” Zip the bags and tape or place on a shelf or inside a cupboard. Check the bags every few days. Which one grows the most mold first?

One thought on “Clean vs. Dirty Hands Bread Experiment”

Great idea think I will try it out with my class.

Elementary School Teachers Try Out An Interesting White Bread Experiment And It Goes Viral

It always baffles me how some people think not washing your hands after leaving the restroom is completely okay. You’d think it’s common sense, especially with so many nasty bacteria already living on our hands, but apparently not everyone thinks that way. Recently, two teachers – Jaralee Metcalf and Dayna Robertson – found an interesting experiment called “How clean are your hands?” online that shows just how much bacteria lives on our hands, and decided to try it out with their students.

Image credits: Jaralee Annice Metcalf

In an interview with Bored Panda, Jaralee said they chose this experiment because they had just been learning about decaying leaves and mold, and the flu season was approaching. “We decided it would be an awesome mold experiment to learn about germs by using moldy bread!” said the teacher.

Together with the students, the teachers sealed five different slices of bread in ziplock bags. One was fresh, untouched and used as a control, while the rest were touched by dirty and clean hands, touched by kids who used hand sanitizer and even wiped on Chromebooks. The first signs of mold began appearing after just a few days.

Here’s how much mold formed on the slice rubbed on the Chromebooks

Here’s how the untouched slice looks for comparison, this slice was touched by kids with dirty hands, and this one was touched by ones with clean hands, the last one was touched by kids who used hand sanitizer.

Jaralee said that the kids were very involved with the experiment and both the students and the staffed were shocked by the results. “Students from different classrooms in the entire school have come to our class to look at the moldy bread and learn about handwashing,” said the teacher.

“If you send your child to school when they are sick, they put everyone at risk. Including teachers and our families! I’d like to urge parents to keep their sick children at home!” advised the teacher.

Jamralee posted the results of the experiment to Facebook, and it quickly went viral

People loved the experiment.

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