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Our Lady of Lourdes National School, Inchicore, Dublin

Working Scientifically in 5th Class

23rd Mar 2021

Strand: Materials

Strand Unit: Materials and Change

Scientific skills: observation and inference

Our focus in science over the last few weeks has been on our skills of observation and inference. We have been examining photographs of everyday items under a microscope, making observations about them and then using these observations as clues to make inferences about the photographs. We also linked this to the very important issue of hand-washing. To investigate how important it is to wash our hands properly we got 3 slices of bread. After lunch one day we all passed the first slice of bread around. We then quickly rinsed our hands with water (no soap) and passed another slice of bread around. And finally, after using the proper hand-washing technique we passed the third slice of bread around.

After a few days we made observations about the changes that had occurred to each slice of bread:

Observations: there were patches of blue on each slice, much more on the slices that were held without washing our hands properly.

Inferences: We inferred that the blue-mould on some of the bread was greater because there were more germs on our hands that weren’t washed properly. We also inferred that soap is very powerful in hygiene practices.

This was an interesting experiment and really showed us the effects of good hand-washing techniques!