In Year 2, our science topic has been all about animals and humans. We have learned all about what different animals need to survive, and have been really lucky to learn all about how to keep our bodies healthy with our fantastic visitor!
We have also been learning about the importance of maintaining good hygiene in order to prevent sickness. We all know lots about washing our hands, but we have also discussed the fact that we should keep our hair, bodies and teeth clean too. To explore and consolidate our understanding of germs and the way in which we should wash our hands to try to reduce and prevent them, we took part in a little experiment. We love experiments in Year 2!
Before we did this though, we had to think about why we were doing it and we had to make some predictions about what we would find. We discussed some variables, and discovered that this would mean the things that we would change within our experiment. One thing that we would change, to test our theories, was the heat of the water and whether or not we used soap to wash our hands. There were a few things that we would keep the same, such as the mixture of glue and glitter (germs). We discussed what a fair test is and we decided that we should use a timer to make sure that each of our volunteers would be washing their hands for the same amount of time. We thought it would be silly for one person to wash their hands for a second, and have someone else to it for 20 minutes! We chose to wash our hands for 30 seconds, using the same timer each time. During our experiment, we realised that for those using soap, we would have to make sure we used the same amount! We decided on two pumps of soap.
Our test looked at whether cold water, cold water and soap, warm water, or warm water and soap would work best at getting rid of our germs. Which would you predict would work best and why? We had some mixed ideas during our prediction process!
In our investigation, we found that warm water and warm water and soap worked much better than just cold water! In our lessons, we are going to think about why this is the case. Can any of you find out why warm water may be best for washing hands? We did know, however, that soap helps to remove the dirt so we were not surprised that using soap did make a difference.
We had a great time during this experiment and we were shocked to see some of the results. We hope you like our pictures!
I have found some reasons: Warm water is more effective than cold water because it removes excess oils from the hand that can harbor bacteria.
It also feels comfortable to wash with warm water on cold wintry days. It helps get rid of germs and viruses too!
I enjoyed the science experiment and hope we can have more science experiments soon. Thank you teachers.
What a great experiment and reminder of why it is so important to wash our hands with warm water AND soap! It was really wonderful to see how excited you all were before, during and after the experiment. Can you remember if you made a correct prediction? Goodness me I need to work on my ‘experiment face’!
That was very fun discussing all about why we need to clean our bodies are so important so we don’t get sick and we didn’t wash our hands the germs in our hands will come to our mouth and then we get sick. Why we brush our teeth:we brush our teeth because we will get a tooth decay or a cavity. The hot water was good because the hot water melts the glue. The hot water and soap was also good because the soap fights the germs and get it clean.
I think this experiment is superb because it was messy and fun. I think that if we do another experiment we should mix clay, paint, water and finally glitter.I think it would be a very colossal, huge mess though.I wonder what happens when you mix dynamite and water.
What a super experiment!