As you walk into your kitchen, the aroma of freshly baked cookies surrounds you. All but one of the delicious cookies are gone, and you manage to make it yours. Just as you bite into the soft, warm cookie, a piece of it folds and crumbles onto the floor. What do you do? Quickly pick it up and eat it, maybe even "blow" the germs off of it? Or do you dispose of the cookie? Which choice is the right choice? This dilemma is known as the five-second rule. The supposed rule states that if any solid food is inadvertently dropped on the floor, as long as it is retrieved within five seconds, it remains perfectly sanitary and therefore edible.

This project over viewed this widely used rule. The experimenter wad interested in proving that the usage of the five second rule may prove harmful. Secondly...