Science is more fun when kids are excited about it, and what could be more exciting than eating the experiment?
Eating is fun. There's little doubt about that, so it follows that adding food to science would make science fun for kids. Making science interesting in this way, and making it hands-on, helps kids understand science in a way that simply reading about it might not.
Fractures
For this experiment you will need a slice of cheese. As simple as that sounds, this experiment examines the properties of fractures in a surface. Using a butter knife, make a small slice in the middle of the cheese. Pull on either side of the piece of cheese and watch how the fracture changes and grows. Now make two slices, an inch apart, and offset diagonally from each other. Pull the cheese again. Watch how the fractures interact with each other.
Triboluminescence
Triboluminescence sounds complicated, but there's an easy way to see it in action. You'll need a wintergreen Life Saver. No other flavor works as well as wintergreen. Turn off all the lights and stand in front of a mirror. Wait for your eyes to adapt to the dark, and then place the Life Saver in your mouth. Start chewing, but make sure you can still see the Life Saver. You should see tiny sparks of light. That's triboluminescence at work.
Edible Batteries
This experiment requires a little bit of preparation in gathering materials. You'll need a potato or a lemon. You might also want to try the experiment on different fruits to compare effectiveness. As well as your fruit or vegetable, you'll need a zinc electrode, a copper electrode and copper wire. You can find these materials in your local hardware store. Most important, you'll need a small light bulb. Place the electrodes on opposite sides of your potato.Then connect the light bulb to the wire, which should connect to the electrodes. Observe the light.
Edible Volcano
Bake cookie dough for around 12 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You may want to coat your pan with tin foil and lightly grease it. After it has cooked, sculpt it into a volcano shape. Use white icing for glue. This is your inner layer. After the inner layer, bake more cookie dough. Sculpt this over the previous layer. Crumble a dark cookie such as an Oreo to represent dirt on the volcano. If desired, you can use pudding for lava.
Tags: Life Saver, cookie dough, each other, electrode copper, inner layer