A mom has shared a quick, smart, and highly informative science experiment on social media to help kids understand why it’s so important to wash their hands.
In the video, Kelly places a plastic bowl filled with water on a kitchen countertop and tells her kids, “Okay, ready? We’re going to learn about germs.” She shakes black pepper into the water and asks her son to dip in his finger. He does, and upon pulling it out, he finds it covered in black speckles, “germs” that have affixed to his skin, and more than you might expect.
Next, Kelly asks her son to rub another finger in liquid soap and then dip it into the peppered water. When he does, we are left speechless as the “germs” are instantly repelled by the soapy finger, and the boy removes it to find it spotless.
Kelly claimed that any brand of dish soap would work if other parents wished to replicate the experiment.
“That’s the perfect visual to teach my kids why washing hands is important,” wrote another. “Thank you for the tip!”
“Wow awesome! I’m gonna show my kids, I’m an adult and learned something new,” another netizen added. “Never seen this before and made my jaw drop.”
Responding to one of the video’s comments, Kelly clarified, “[M]y uncle showed this to me when I was 11. Which was more than 10 years ago. So maybe he should get the credit?”
The experiment seems to be well known among educators, and the nifty trick for promoting hand-washing is spreading fast. Just a few days before Kelly’s video went viral, a pre-kindergarten teacher from Florida dazzled her students with the very same pepper-and-soap-based experiment.
“I was really just doing this to show the importance of washing your hands,” Amanda explained. “[A]fter going to the bathroom, after we came back from lunch, before going to lunch, after going to the playground, they were like, ‘We need to wash our hands!’ It was a constant thing for the rest of the day.”
Soap, however, disrupts the surface tension of water. The water molecules pull away from the soap, taking the pepper, or “germs,” with them.
The user suggested covering the child’s hands with olive or vegetable oil, sprinkling biodegradable glitter onto their hands to represent the germs we pick up throughout the day, then allowing the child to attempt to wipe it off with a paper towel. “Some germs fall off,” they explained, “but the majority is still on their hands.”
The child then attempts to use water to remove the glitter, but a lot of glitter remains. Finally, they use soap, and the “germs” are effectively cleaned off. “We used this a few times in preschool as a visual,” the netizen explained, “to show why you should take the time to properly wash your hands.”
When it comes to hands-on hygiene, sharing is caring, and this viral experiment is helping children around the world.
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