Three students from one of Olds High Schools' Bio 20 classes garnered tickets to last Sunday's MythBusters show for their video “Germbusters,” which took first-place in the school category.
Before going on a swabbing spree, Karla Shultz' Bio 20 students Ryan Payne, Kaitlyn Simpson, and Denna Zawalykut took to surveying their classmates to see which places they deemed the dirtiest.
“The general consensus was that the bathroom would be the dirtiest area in a public place, which became the focus of the myth,” said student Ryan Payne.
“We went around the school and swabbed what we thought would be the dirtiest places,” said student Denna Zawalykut.
The Olds High school students then proceeded to find the survey's hypothesis to be inverted: The public washrooms were in fact cleaner than the public phone outside the office.
“It had more bacteria than the inside of the boys' urinals,” said Payne.
“And the girls toilet seat,” said student Kaitlyn Simpson.
“I guess the reason behind that is the only people who use it are the people who phone home sick,” said Payne.
The three students then proceeded to harvest the germs they had collected on common surfaces, which included railings, door handles, toilet seats, urinals, the office phone, and a control (un-swabbed).
“They put them in petri film that would allow for certain bacterial growth,” said Teacher Karla Shultz.
They then proceeded to allow the bacteria to incubate for 2-3 days.
Surprisingly, the railings and door handles were the cleanest.
All three were surprised by their results.
“I know there's a lot of bacteria on public things, but I never expected it to be more than toilets,” said Payne.
“You could probably flush the office phone down the toilet and it would come out cleaner [than it was].”
“I think it shows that our janitors really keep this place clean,” said Shultz.
Coincidentally, neither Payne, Simpson, or Zawalykut had previously seen the episode of MythBusters in which Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman complete a nearly identical experiment, where they had very similar results.
For Savage and Hyneman, household light switches and keyboards outranked (exponentially) the amount of germs found on a household toilet seat.
About 130 students from various science classes in OHS took part in the MythBusters competition.
Science Happens Here, in partnership with Science Alberta Foundation, have been cultivating youth interest in science the past couple months through the contest to meet the MythBusters.
The contest challenged entrants to create a short video demonstrating the scientific method, which would enter them into the contest for the sold-out show at the Ralph Klein Centre on Sunday, March 13.
“The goal of science happens here is to encourage youth to question the world around them and to inspire curiosity,” said Francesca Garigue, project coordinator for Science Alberta Foundation.
She said Science Alberta is assisting in the creation of tomorrow's knowledge workers by instilling an appreciation of science in a new generation of Albertans.
Miss Gelaine Lesiuk, who assisted her Grade 1 and 2 class with their third-place winning experiment “Coke Sinkers,” said the kids have been bouncing off the walls since they found out they'd be meeting the MythBusters.
“They're really excited, you have no idea,” said Lesiuk.
Lesiuk and her class utilized the scientific method, with each of her eight students taking a portion of the explanation of the experiment, which proved that Diet Coke floats, while regular Coke sinks.
Dozens of young myth busters from Mountain View County and area submitted videos to Science Happens Here's “Bust a Myth” contest.
Other winners include:
Nick Ekelund, a 14 year-old homeschooled teen from the Spruce View area, and his three friends took third-place in the community category for their video, in which were conducted a series of tests to see if batteries subjected to extreme cold would have extended or shortened lifespans.
Ekelund, assisted by Bryan Burdick, Steven Burdick and Robert Cowan, subjected Xbox controllers flashlights to extreme cold, and used one of each at room temperature as the controlled variable.
Second-place community “Bust a Myth” winners from team Aussie Acres attributed their win to the science behind the internet.
“Without Facebook and e-mail, we wouldn't have been able to do it,” said Kobi Chant.
Kobi, 9, and his little brother, Colin, 5, along with some help from mom and dad, worked together their cousins in Australia to disprove the myth that water drains counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
First-place winners (Community category) Craig and Adam Holder, ages 10 and 7 (respectively) are huge fans of MythBusters, and said they could hardly wait to meet Grant and Tory on Sunday.
“I felt like I almost fainted,” said Adam.
“He fell on the floor as if he had,” said mom Andrea Kingsley.
They were inspired by a viral video their uncle from northern Ontario had posted of himself tossing a cup of hot-water into the extreme sub-zero temperatures, and watching it evaporate before it hit the ground.
“They thought it was really cool because it went up in a big puff of smoke,” said Kingsley.
“We did it at one point before we filmed it when it was even colder, and the cloud floated all the way across the yard, it was really spectacular.”
Finally, second-place winner in the school category was Ms. Bruinsma's Grade 5 class at West Park Elementary for their video “Play-Doh Armour,” which discovered Play-Doh can act as a protective barrier to certain objects (like eggs) when dropped from within a certain height range.
