Science Sunday/Stomach

Selena has been fascinated with the noises our stomachs make, especially after my doctor let her listen to my stomach.  We watched an episode of Sid The Science Kid, and seen this simple experiment that explains how the stomach works.

What we used:

A Stethoscope

Lemmon Juice

Crackers

Zip Lock Sandwich Bag

We had a discussion of what happens to our food when we eat it. I asked Selena where she thinks her food goes when she swallows it. Her answer was pretty accurate with “My Tummy!”

I then asked her why our stomachs make noises? She said, “Because I am hungry.” Ok pretty good answer.

We then talked about how our body uses the food we eat, this was kind of a hard concept for Selena to truly follow, she just couldn’t imagine that when she eats our bodies use the food for energy, strong bones, muscles, teeth, growth. She finally settled for the idea that “I am no longer hungry.”

We listened to our stomachs with the stethoscope.

She also had to listen to my stomach.

I had her take a bite of cracker but before swallowing it I asked her to spit it out in her hand, (we lost grandpa there, this grossed him out). We talked about how our teeth broke down the cracker but that it was still pretty solid.

While I put the lemon juice in the baggie, I had Selena use her fingers as teeth to break up a cracker. At this point I explained that our stomach has acids in it, much like the saliva or spit in our mouth.

We then added the cracker one piece at a time to the bag. We discussed that our stomach is a muscle and that this muscle squishes, and shakes up our food in the acid. I had Selena squeeze and shake the baggie.

Then we took a look at our finished experiment and Selena easily came to the conclusion that the acid in our stomachs break down and dissolve the food much better then our chewing.

To see what great Science Experiments others are doing in their homes visit Ticia at Adventures in Mommydum.