Remember to Floss Daily

Mentalfloss.com is a site that routines offers interesting tidbits designed to get readers to go, "Hmmmmmm." Today's posting described the ten most interesting numbers to Americans and contained the rationale for things like why gas prices end in .9 cents and what's up with the long decimal string on pi...you know, interesting things like that. One number, in particular, interested me: the number 5...
as in the number of seconds in the "five-second rule" ( I actually thought it was three) that allows us to eat things that have fallen on the floor as long as we can grab them before they have lain on the floor for more than the allotted five seconds...and believe it or not, this "rule" has actually been tested. Researchers have some differing ideas about the time limit, as one might expect.
In 2003, Jillian Clark performed the first known scientific test of the five-second rule. In the Food Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois, she placed gummi bears and cookies on ceramic tile that was a harbor for E coli and found that within five seconds, the bacteria had spread to all the food items. This study led to other studies.
Dr. Paul L. Dawson of Clemson University found that bacteria transferred instantly so he recommends the "zero second rule" that prohibits one from eating anything that's contacted a suspicious surface (e.g. one that is NOT the inside of one's mouth).
Curiosity piqued, Clark followed up Dawson's study by testing the floors at the U of I campus, especially the ones most heavily trafficked and found that there was very little bacteria present. apparently, the floors on the Champaign-Urbana campus are clean enough to eat off of.
I hope mine are...and I hope yours are, too.
If you are interested in more about fascinating numbers, here's the URL from today's mentalfloss.com posting:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/05/31/interesting.numbers.american.culture.mf/index.html?hpt=hp_bn8