# People believe the 3 second rule is real?! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 16, 2004, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764 "2004-06-16T23:56:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![clayton\_e](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c57346/32.png) [@clayton\_e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clayton_e)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2004, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/1 "2004-06-16T23:56:24Z")
I saw someone drop a chip on the ground earlier today. “THREE SECOND RULE!” he shouts, then grabs it up and chomps it down. me: “Uh, ok.” him: “Don’t you know about the three second rule? Its something about how germs won’t be able to grab on it as easy as they could if its there for like thirty seconds or something.” me: :dubious: “um… I thought the three second rule was a joke that people who didn’t care if there was a speck of dirt or something on their chip said. I mean, I wouldn’t eat it if it fell on the floor of the bathroom (don’t ask me why I said bathroom, just the first thing that came to mind) or something and I managed to grab it up in under three seconds. I wouldn’t really give a crap if it was the last chip and it landed on my clean carpet or something.” him: “Well the bathroom is a different story, but the three second rule thing is real.” me: :dubious: or is there really something behind this three second rule thing that I’ve managed to miss? ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/2 "2004-06-17T00:00:26Z")
You missed a great opportunity, clayton. “Lisa, I’d like to buy your rock” Whatta maroon! ---
**Author:** ![harmless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@harmless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmless)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/3 "2004-06-17T00:08:14Z")
Sounds like someone forgot to explain at some point along the way that it was a joke. 😛 And I thought it was 10 seconds. :dubious: Eh, Og made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt…or sumpthin’. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/4 "2004-06-17T00:10:24Z")
What a freakin **MORON**!!! … Everyone knows it’s the [_FIVE_ second rule!!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=47039&highlight=5+second+rule) ---
**Author:** ![harmless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@harmless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmless)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/5 "2004-06-17T00:13:20Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > What a freakin **MORON**!!! > > … Everyone knows it’s the [_FIVE_ second rule!!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=47039&highlight=5+second+rule) :dubious: : AHEM! : ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/6 "2004-06-17T00:18:04Z")
I think it’s just a way for people to justify eating food off the floor in front of another person. Anyone who believes that “germs won’t be able to grab on it as easy as they could if its there for like thirty seconds or something” is quite delusional. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/7 "2004-06-17T00:37:11Z")
I’ve been wondering about this myself. Just how easy is it for germs to transfer from surface to surface? I assume that, for the case of a dropped item hitting the floor, germs from each of the impacting surfaces would be rammed into the other surface by the force of the impact, but, other than that, how mobile are germs? Do they have to be transferred by an external agent, or can they migrate on their own? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/8 "2004-06-17T00:55:04Z")
Sure, it’s real! Why else do you think Shaq gets called for being in the paint so long? Hunh? Hunh?? HUNH!?? ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/9 "2004-06-17T01:00:38Z")
It’s because germs are stoners, and they’ll keep staring off into space for five seconds after they notice a stimulus. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/10 "2004-06-17T01:41:28Z")
My father, who is old enough to know better, also believes in the three second rule. He says that “scientists” figured it out. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/11 "2004-06-17T02:11:38Z")
If you want to steer him toward an actual cite, [Snopes](http://www.snopes.com/food/tainted/dropped.asp) says ‘false’. ---
**Author:** ![Shaolinrabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Shaolinrabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shaolinrabbit)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/12 "2004-06-17T02:54:02Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > I’ve been wondering about this myself. Just how easy is it for germs to transfer from surface to surface? Depends on the surface, say a chip landed on a hooker in Singapore… ---
**Author:** ![Helena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c68b51/32.png) [@Helena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helena)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/13 "2004-06-17T03:35:50Z")
Didn’t they do this on Mythbusters or something? ---
**Author:** ![Phnord\_Prephect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/df705f/32.png) [@Phnord\_Prephect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phnord_Prephect)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/14 "2004-06-17T03:54:02Z")
Of course the three second rule is false. Contact is contact. Once the item touches the floor, a certain percentage of the transferable matter on that floor is going to be stuck to the item. This of course depends largely upon the item in question: A piece of toast with butter will enact a much larger transfer, in both directions, than an M&M for example. But the main factor is the cleanliness of the floor, and your own willingness to expose yourself to ‘germs’, the scourge of mankind. Relax, folks. The body knows how to fight germs. Don’t eat stuff off the bathroom floor, for Og’s sake! Don’t eat out of the bathroom at all, if you can help it! But come on… if ya drop an M&M on the carpet, it’s not gonna kill you to eat it. If you just dropped it, pick it up and wipe it off. The odds that you’re gonna even notice anything ‘bad’ because of the minisucle contamination is virtually zero. I myself dropped three frozen pretzels (the bag was upsidedown when I pulled it out of the freezer) onto my kitchen floor last night, and nuked and ate them anyway. Mmmm, pretzelly! Did I mention I’m a bachelor? I think I own a mop… :eek: ---
**Author:** ![harmless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@harmless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmless)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/15 "2004-06-17T03:57:38Z")
“Kiss it up to Og” is a (variation on a) popular saying around here. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2004, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/16 "2004-06-17T15:20:14Z")
FWIW, I’d only heard the 3-second rule in campfire-type situations. To me, it does seem to have some sort of logic there. You cook your hotdog, and it falls on the ground while you’re trying to get it into your bun: unless it fell in something skanky, you just brush any dirt off, put it on the bun, and eat it. The idea is that the dirt out in the woods is ‘clean’ dirt, in a sense: it doesn’t have the sort of germs that your kitchen floor might have from being walked on all the time. And to me, 3 seconds means I just saw it fall; it hasn’t been sitting there long enough for flies to land on it, ants to crawl on it, and so forth. If it’s been there long enough for me to take my eyes off it, though, it goes in the trash. The study that Snopes cites was set in an indoor environment, and I can’t see that it says anything about the great outdoors. But I could be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![dwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwyr/32/363_2.png) [@dwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwyr)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2004, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/17 "2004-06-18T00:19:24Z")
Well, outdoor dirt does contain such lovelies as Clostridium perfrigens (gas gangrene), Clostridium tetani (tetanus), and Bacillus cereus(food poisoning. Granted they need the proper conditions to grow and cause illness but they’re there along with a few billion other microbes. Most are probably harmless but not all. ---
**Author:** ![dwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwyr/32/363_2.png) [@dwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwyr)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2004, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/18 "2004-06-18T00:23:16Z")
Plus, don’t bears you-know-what in the woods? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2004, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/19 "2004-06-18T01:25:49Z")
In that case, couldn’t you just put it back onto the fire for a little while to burn off (presumably most of) the germs? ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2004, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764/20 "2004-06-18T01:54:48Z")
I saw a (drunk) guy drop his burger right into the huge pile of campfire ashes and promptly pick it right up and eat it. It was _caked_ in ashes. :eek: [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-believe-the-3-second-rule-is-real/250764.md?page=2)