The students at Wilder Elementary in Littleton, Colorado proved that Mom is right, “Wash your hands with soap and warm water!”? The third grade class did an experiment using Petri dishes prepared with agar (a seaweed derivative). Agar is an ideal “food”? source for the bacteria. The students collected samples around the school including on top of the tissue box, door knobs and more. You won’t believe what they found growing in the common areas that we all touch. They also tested how well common cleaners eliminated the bacteria.

The students also learned how to properly handle the growing bacteria. Always seal the Petri dishes and throw them away when you are done. The teachers had the students take pictures of the dishes, so they could refer back to their findings, without having to store bacteria that can make them sick.

Watch the Video to see what they found

Read more about how to do your own experiment with nutrient agar.

Popularity: 16% [?]

It has the potential of being the most popular science fair project of all time. The Mentos Geyser is definitely fun to watch, but some teachers are missing the opportunity to use the activity to teach science. Over the last few weeks, I’ve received emails from students explaining that their teachers are forbidding them from doing the Mentos Geyser as a science project. Why? The common response is… “there’s no science to blowing up pop.”

What? How did these teachers miss the rich science content that oozes from the bottle with every eruption? Combine the strong science with the student’s motivation to want to use the scientific method and you’ve got an amazing activity.

Brian Rice, a math teacher at Gwinn Middle School in Michigan, recently used the Mentos Geyser as a great teaching opportunity. As one of the experiments, the middle schoolers measured how high pop would spray when a Mentos candy is dropped into the pop bottle. In one day, eighth-grade classes and some seventh-grade classes conducted the Mentos and pop experiment with the objective to see whether different types of pops have greater eruptions. They ended up testing a total of 44 different varieties, ranging from Diet Coke to root beer.

This is a great example of science in action. Here’s to Brian Rice - a great teacher who gets it! Instead of forbidding the activity, Mr. Rice uses the Internet sensation to grab his students’ attention and put the scientific method to the test.

Your can read the article that appeared in the Mining Journal on January 8, 2007.

Popularity: 30% [?]

It’s probably no surprise that the Mentos and Diet Coke phenomena made Google’s Best of the Web in 2006. We were honored to have a clip of our video included in their year end review.

I think it’s interesting to see how the original experiment changed over a very short period of time. As you watch the video, you’ll see that the simple idea of dropping candy into soda to create an eruption of carbon dioxide and soda morphed into 13 year olds slamming 2-liter bottles of soda on the ground to create to make soda bottle rockets. The later is not really the Mentos Experiment… but it’s fun to watch.

Okay, chalk one up for the science teachers. A silly science experiment became an international phenomenon in less than a year thanks to Google Video, YouTube and so many more. Class dismissed. It’s strange to see how this simple little experiment morphed.

Popularity: 1% [?]