Work individually. Touch your thumb to your pointer finger on the same hand. Touch your thumb to your middle finger on the same hand. Touch your thumb

• Work individually.• Touch your thumb to your pointer finger on the same hand.•Touch your thumb to your middle finger on the same hand.•Touch your thumb to your ring finger on the same hand.•Touch your thumb to your pinky finger on the same hand.

©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009


What are

opposable thumbs?


Opposable thumbs:

The ability to touch the pad of your thumb to

the pads of each other finger.

You could say that they’re…THUMB-thing Special


Humans aren’t the only animals with opposable thumbs !


Cool, thanks to my opposable thumbs I can send text messages on my blackberry. ©Dr. Mitchel Goodkin, 2009


Please give me a ride.

I’m a


lousy hitchhiker.


Opposable thumbs help to make fine manipulation of objects easier.

Animals with opposable thumbs have better grasping and

maneuvering skills.


In this lesson, you will learn how to do a “bean passing” exercise. The exercise is designed to show the importance of opposable thumbs, but also designed to produce data

sets for manipulation.

You will then learn to incorporate the data sets into Microsoft Excel to produce Data Tables and graphs


Be forewarned, this is not a one day lesson. The first day will be

discussion and performance of the exercise, while the second day will be manipulation and analysis of the

data.

So Don’t Lose Your Data !


Turn to your elbow partner because in today’s activity we will be working in

groups of 2


• The overall idea of this exercise is to see how many times a bean can be passed from hand to hand using different finger combinations

• A naming system must be agreed upon for the fingers of the hand

(we will use anatomical standard naming)


Upper RightFirst Phalange

UR1

Upper RightSecond Phalange

UR2

Upper RightThird Phalange

UR3Upper RightFourth Phalange

UR4

Upper RightFifth

PhalangeUR5

Place your right hand, palm up, on your looseleaf paper. Have your partner trace your hand.



Supply monitors will pass out 3 kidney beans

to each group.(extra beans are provided in case some are dropped)

The teacher holds the stopwatch and will time one minute per set

of finger combinations.


As you pass the bean back and forth, you will count the

number of successful passes made with each finger

combination; however….


… each time you drop the bean, you have to restart the counting at zero.

Remember, this is not a contest, merely a method

to collect data.


For your first attempt you will use the right upper first and second phalanges

(UR1-UR2) to pass the bean.

After you’re done passing, shake out your hands so you

don’t get a cramp in the muscles.


Record your results


We will do this 4 more times, using the following

finger combinations.


UR1-UR3 UR1-UR5

UR2-UR3 UR2-UR5

Draw a simple data table to record your results.

Finger Combination

Used

Number of BeanPasses in1 Minute

UR1-UR2

UR1-UR3

UR1-UR5

UR2-UR3

UR2-UR5

127

94

62

30

0

Zero is important

Remember, this is not a contest, it is

DATA

Save your data sheets, because tomorrow we will learn how to use

Microsoft Excel.


Microsoft Excel

• Now that we have some data, we can start using Excel to manage it.

• Begin by opening the Excel program.

• You will see the empty cells of a basic spreadsheet.

• Across the top you will see letters A,B,C,… these represent columns

• Down the left you will see numbers 1,2,3,… these represent rows

Microsoft Excel

• Find the cell corresponding to the “A” column and the “1” row

• Type in the finger combination used for the first set of passes (UR1-UR2)

Microsoft Excel

• In the cell corresponding to A-2, enter the finger combination used for the second set of passes (UR1-UR3)

• Enter the next group in A-3 and so on until all the groups are represented

Microsoft Excel

• You should now have something that looks like this.

A B

1 UR1-UR2

2 UR1-UR3

3 UR1-UR5

4 UR2-UR3

5 UR2-UR5

• Now find the cell corresponding to B-1 and enter the number of passes done using the UR1-UR2 finger combination.

• Next find the cell corresponding to B-2 and enter the number of passes for the UR1-UR3 finger combination.

• Fill in all the rest of your results.

Microsoft Excel

• You should now have something that looks like this.

A B

1 UR1-UR2 127

2 UR1-UR3 94

3 UR1-UR5 62

4 UR2-UR3 30

5 UR2-UR5 0

…however, this is just raw data. We want to compile it into a bar graph for ease of analysis.

A B

1 UR1-UR2 127

2 UR1-UR3 94

3 UR1-UR5 62

4 UR2-UR3 30

5 UR2-UR5 0

Microsoft Excel

• To show your data as a bar graph on Excel, simply click “INSERT” and then “CHART”

Microsoft Excel

• We, as teachers, usually think of our bar graphs as vertical columns. On Excel that would be the selection under “Chart type” on the left, called “Columns”

Microsoft Excel

• The selections to the right show you all the various Column Bar Graph displays to choose from. (the most common is the first one)

• If it is highlighted, click the “Next” button to select it and a small image of your bar graph will appear.

• Click “Next” again and your final bar graph will appear.

Microsoft Excel

• Click “Next” again and your can title your graph and label your X and Y axis.

Microsoft Excel

• Click “Next” again and your can title your graph and label your X and Y axis.

• Click “Finish” to get your completed graph.

• It might look something like this….

Microsoft Excel

Work Time, ctd.• There are important science rules to follow

when naming the X and Y axis or in titling the graph.

• To label an axis, you must give a descriptive name (which may include units if applicable)

• To create a title make a sentence that combines the X-Axis and Y-Axis. The title is actually a descriptive sentence.

• Look again at the Axis labels and title of our graph.

• If we look back at the graph produced we can then analyze and draw conclusions from the visual representation of the data in this simpler to understand format.

• Let’s look at our bar graph again. Can you see which trial had the highest number of passes?

• Can you see which trial had the least number of successful passes ?

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• It is easy to see that the UR1-UR2 finger combination has the highest number of passes.

• It is also now easy to see that the UR2-UR5 finger combination had the least

number of successful passes.

• Congratulations, you have now done a critical analysis of data and a graph!!

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Documents

Work individually. Touch your thumb to your pointer finger on the same hand. Touch your thumb to your middle finger on the same hand. Touch your thumb