Introduction -When was the last time you washed your hands? -Did you use soap? -What have you done since you washed? -Have you eaten, put your fingers in your mouth, sneezed or coughed on your hands?

Observations in public restrooms have revealed that only 68% of Americans wash up before leaving. Yet, hand washing is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of infections. There are millions of microbes on your hands. Most are naturally occurring and harmless, but some may be disease-causing germs. Hand washing with soap lifts off those microbes and rinses them away.

In this activity your group will test the effectiveness of different hand washing times, techniques and materials.

What does estimate mean? To find an approximate value close to the actual value. What can you tell me about graphing? There are several types of graphs and depending on what type of data you are analyzing, you might choose a different graph for each type of data.

Graphs provide a “picture” of the information you are looking at, and often make that picture easier to interpret. How would you go about plotting a graph? Each graph should have a title, so that as soon as you look at a graph, you know what it is about. Each graph should be labeled with an x-axis and y-axis. These axes need to have evenly spaced intervals.

A point is then plotted by finding where the ordered pair intersects. An ordered pair is a point made up of an x coordinate and a y coordinate (x,y). In this case, each point will represent how clean your hands are after washing them a certain amount of time.

What is spatial reasoning? Understanding and predicting (estimating) something’s relative position (how much space it will take up). In this lesson, it would be the space occupied by the clean (or dirty) area on your hands. If we look at the classroom and consider the class to be 100%, tell me what percent of the classroom is taken up by the beds? How about the percent taken up by the students?

How do we analyze data? We analyze data in various ways. It can be looked at statistically in graphs which compare results. It can be put into tables, charts, or equations. In this lesson we will plot our data on a line graph. When we have finished collecting and plotting our data, we will be able to draw some conclusions related to the amount of time required to wash our hands using aseptic technique.

The following is an example of how you would use spatial reasoning and data analysis in the health care field. You are scheduled for an appendectomy. Your surgeon is preparing to go into the operating suite. What percent of cleanliness would you expect your surgeon to achieve when she did her surgical scrub of her hands? (0% = filthy and 100% = totally clean) Of course you would expect your surgeon to be totally clean. Even if the surgeon is 1% contaminated—she is considered totally contaminated. This exposes you to undue risk of infection and a potential extended hospital stay.

In this activity we will demonstrate different hand washing techniques, and decide which is the most effective method used to practice aseptic technique