Smart 12-year-old

Want an easy junior high science project? Test anything - yes, anything - at a fast food restaurant and compare it with anything else. Chances are, whatever you find at the fast food restaurant is dirtier and has more germs.

Feb. 20, 2006 — Jasmine Roberts never expected her award-winning middle school science project to get so much attention. But the project produced some disturbing results: 70 percent of the time, ice from fast food restaurants was dirtier than toilet water.

The 12-year-old collected ice samples from five restaurants in South Florida — from both self-serve machines inside the restaurant and from drive-thru windows. She then collected toilet water samples from the same restaurants and tested all of them for bacteria at the University of South Florida.

I'll spare you the rest of the dirty details.