Use food in school projects to make studying more fun.
Make school projects both educational and edible. Use food to illustrate concepts in the classroom or for a science fair. The best part about using food in a school project is the lack of cleanup afterward since most of the project is edible.
Candy DNA
Use gumdrops as the bases for a DNA strand model.
Use gumdrops or colored miniature marshmallows to create a DNA helix. Toothpicks serve as the bonds between the bases. Use a different colored gumdrop for each base. For instance, use green gumdrops for guanine, yellow for thymine, red for cytosine and purple for adenine. Pair the bases together: adenine pairs with guanine and thymine couples with cytosine. Attach each half of one pair at the ends of toothpicks to create a single "rung" of the DNA ladder. Insert toothpicks between the "rungs" to connect them in a ladder structure. This is the most basic DNA model suitable for younger children.
Dancing Raisins
Watch carbon dioxide bubbles make raisins dance.
Place raisins into the bottom of a clear beaker or bowl. Cover the raisins with white vinegar and fill the rest of the beaker with water. Spoon in 1 tsp. of baking soda and wait for it to bubble as it reacts with the vinegar. The bubbles will gather around the raisins and make them rise to the top of the container. When the bubbles reach the surface and pop, the raisins sink to the bottom again. Try this also with club soda only, and do not add baking soda.
Gelatin Fruits
Does the type of fruit added to a gelatin change the final dessert?
Conduct a science experiment to see if fruits will remain suspended in gelatin the same. Prepare a box of gelatin dessert for each fruit tested plus one as a control. Try canned fruits and fresh fruits such as canned pineapple, fresh apples, fresh grapes and fresh papaya. Follow the directions on the package for when to add the fruit to the dessert. After chilling the desserts, did all of them set the same? Did some fruits leave the gelatin softer than others?
Natural Battery
Not just for lemonade. Create a battery from a lemon to charge an MP3 player.
For a science project use lemons to power a small electric device such as a clock, portable radio or MP3 player. Explore how the acid from the lemons creates enough electricity to power the device. Insert a piece of copper and a piece of zinc into the fruit and connect them with a wire. Attach the wire to a voltmeter to determine the current. Connect several fruit batteries together until you have a strong enough current to operate a small clock or charge an MP3 player that needs at least 5 volts.
Tags: baking soda, charge player, connect them, food school