It's cold and flu season, which means that it's even more important to wash your hands. Try explaining that to kids, though. At Discovery Elementary school in Idaho Falls, one class did an experiment that will hopefully show kids why washing hands is not optional.

Jaralee Metcalf, a behavioral specialist in the class, posted about the experiment on her Facebook page, and it went completely viral.

We did a science project in class this last month as flu season was starting. We took fresh bread and touched it. We did one slice untouched. One with unwashed hands. One with hand sanitizer. One with washed hands with warm water and soap. Then we decided to rub a piece on all our classroom Chromebooks.

As somebody who is sick and tired of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Wash your hands! Remind your kids to wash their hands! And hand sanitizer is not an alternative to washing hands!! At all!

This is so DISGUSTING!!!

**All the students touched each piece (of the touched pieces)**

**Results took 3-4 weeks because of preservatives**

**It was plain white bread**

** Editing again to clarify: The control piece wasn't fresh when we took this picture. It just wasn't ever touched with naked hands and it was moved immediately from the bread bag to the zip lock baggie (every piece of bread here is from the same loaf and same day)**

**They're freezer ziplock bags meant for raw meat and they're sealed tight**

**We do sanitize our Chromebooks, obviously we did not do that for this experiment 🙄**

**We are an elementary school. Not a fancy CDC lab, so relax a little and WASH YOUR HANDS**

🚨🚨 Again! This is an elementary school classroom experiment, try not to get upset! 🚨🚨

**I am in no way trying to make Google Chromebooks look bad, all laptops have germs, the amount is based on the person/people using them and not the brand (can't believe I need to specify this)**

**Closeups for those concerned about seeing the results**

**Here is a link for those that would like to try this experiment at home.https://www.mottchildren.org/…/camp-little-vict…/dirty-hands **

The story made it to the local news, and teacher Dayna Roberston admitted that even she was surprised by the results.

"Everybody touched it and made sure that, you know, we got it nice and dirty," Robertson said. "I didn't think it was going to be as shocking as they were."

"You know everybody kind of relies on those hand sanitizers and to see results that were this drastic kind of made everybody realize that maybe we're a little bit dirtier than we thought," Robertson added.

Hand sanitizers are good in a pinch, but when it comes to staying truly clean, soap and water is the way to go.

What do you think of the results?