We all know that our hands are never as clean as we'd hope they are. It's just impossible to go through your life without touching things and things are usually covered in bacteria of some sort.
As adults, we've learned to fend off the bad bacteria by doing things like washing our hands regularly and sneezing into our elbows, but kids... not so much.
She'd seen many of the students at Cabrillo College swab things like keyboards and door knobs as part of small projects in germ theory.
When her 8-year-old son asked if they could see what was on his hand, she was interested too.
Afterwards, she had him gently press his palm into a Petri dish ready for bacterial growth. She incubated it at body temperature for a day and then let it sit out at room temperature.
The experiment was done in 2015, which is when this image originally went viral, but it's the sort of thing you should be reminded of regularly.
At the time, she told TODAY that it's an example of things we come in contact with everyday.
The other white spots could be a form of staph bacteria and the yellows and oranges are likely yeast.
Our skin does a great job of protecting us from those bacteria, so this is a great reminder of how important it is to wash your hands regularly while also understanding that the bacteria is a normal part of life.
h/t: TODAY
