Work individually. Touch your thumb to your pointer finger on the same hand. Touch your thumb to your middle finger on the same hand. Touch your thumb to your ring finger on the same hand. Touch your thumb to your pinky finger on the same hand. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

What are opposable thumbs? ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Opposable thumbs: The ability to touch the pad of your thumb to the pads of each other finger.

You could say that they’re… THUMB-thing Special ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Humans aren’t the only animals with opposable thumbs ! ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Cool, thanks to my opposable thumbs I can send text messages on my blackberry. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Please give me a ride. I’m a ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009 lousy hitchhiker.

©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Opposable thumbs help to make fine manipulation of objects easier. Animals with opposable thumbs have better grasping and maneuvering skills. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

In this lesson, you will learn how to do a “bean passing” exercise. The exercise is designed to show the importance of opposable thumbs, but also designed to produce data sets for manipulation. You will then learn to incorporate the data sets into Microsoft Excel to produce Data Tables and graphs ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Be forewarned, this is not a one day lesson. The first day will be discussion and performance of the exercise, while the second day will be manipulation and analysis of the data. So Don’t Lose Your Data ! ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Turn to your elbow partner because in today’s activity we will be working in groups of 2 ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

The overall idea of this exercise is to see how many times a bean can be passed from hand to hand using different finger combinations A naming system must be agreed upon for the fingers of the hand (we will use anatomical standard naming) ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Upper Right First Phalange UR1 Upper Right Second Phalange UR2 Upper Right Third Phalange UR3 Upper Right Fourth Phalange UR4 Upper Right Fifth Phalange UR5 Place your right hand, palm up, on your looseleaf paper. Have your partner trace your hand. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Supply monitors will pass out 3 kidney beans to each group. (extra beans are provided in case some are dropped)

The teacher holds the stopwatch and will time one minute per set of finger combinations. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

As you pass the bean back and forth, you will count the number of successful passes made with each finger combination; however…. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

… each time you drop the bean, you have to restart the counting at zero. Remember, this is not a contest, merely a method to collect data. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

For your first attempt you will use the right upper first and second phalanges (UR1-UR2) to pass the bean.

After you’re done passing, shake out your hands so you don’t get a cramp in the muscles. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Record your results ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

We will do this 4 more times, using the following finger combinations. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009 UR1-UR3 UR1-UR5 UR2-UR3 UR2-UR5

Draw a simple data table to record your results. Finger Combination Used Number of Bean Passes in 1 Minute UR1-UR2 UR1-UR3 UR1-UR5 UR2-UR3 UR2-UR Zero is important Remember, this is not a contest, it is DATA

Save your data sheets, because tomorrow we will learn how to use Microsoft Excel. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009

Microsoft Excel Now that we have some data, we can start using Excel to manage it. Begin by opening the Excel program. You will see the empty cells of a basic spreadsheet.

Across the top you will see letters A,B,C,… these represent columns Down the left you will see numbers 1,2,3,… these represent rows Microsoft Excel

Find the cell corresponding to the “A” column and the “1” row Type in the finger combination used for the first set of passes (UR1-UR2) Microsoft Excel

In the cell corresponding to A-2, enter the finger combination used for the second set of passes (UR1-UR3) Enter the next group in A-3 and so on until all the groups are represented Microsoft Excel

You should now have something that looks like this. AB 1UR1-UR2 2UR1-UR3 3UR1-UR5 4UR2-UR3 5UR2-UR5

Now find the cell corresponding to B-1 and enter the number of passes done using the UR1-UR2 finger combination. Next find the cell corresponding to B-2 and enter the number of passes for the UR1-UR3 finger combination. Fill in all the rest of your results. Microsoft Excel

You should now have something that looks like this. AB 1UR1-UR2127 2UR1-UR394 3UR1-UR562 4UR2-UR330 5UR2-UR50

…however, this is just raw data. We want to compile it into a bar graph for ease of analysis. AB 1UR1-UR2127 2UR1-UR394 3UR1-UR562 4UR2-UR330 5UR2-UR50 Microsoft Excel

To show your data as a bar graph on Excel, simply click “INSERT” and then “CHART” Microsoft Excel

We, as teachers, usually think of our bar graphs as vertical columns. On Excel that would be the selection under “Chart type” on the left, called “Columns” Microsoft Excel

The selections to the right show you all the various Column Bar Graph displays to choose from. (the most common is the first one) If it is highlighted, click the “Next” button to select it and a small image of your bar graph will appear. Click “Next” again and your final bar graph will appear. Microsoft Excel

Click “Next” again and your can title your graph and label your X and Y axis. Microsoft Excel

Click “Next” again and your can title your graph and label your X and Y axis. Click “Finish” to get your completed graph. It might look something like this…. Microsoft Excel

Work Time, ctd. There are important science rules to follow when naming the X and Y axis or in titling the graph. To label an axis, you must give a descriptive name (which may include units if applicable) To create a title make a sentence that combines the X-Axis and Y-Axis. The title is actually a descriptive sentence. Look again at the Axis labels and title of our graph.

If we look back at the graph produced we can then analyze and draw conclusions from the visual representation of the data in this simpler to understand format. Let’s look at our bar graph again. Can you see which trial had the highest number of passes? Can you see which trial had the least number of successful passes ? Share

It is easy to see that the UR1-UR2 finger combination has the highest number of passes. It is also now easy to see that the UR2-UR5 finger combination had the least number of successful passes. Congratulations, you have now done a critical analysis of data and a graph!! Share