Sunday, March 21, 2010

Science Sunday/Stomach

ScienceSunday

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:

100_2248A 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.

100_2250 100_2252 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.

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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.

100_2257 100_2254 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.

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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.

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

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5 comments:

  1. Okay, that is way super cool. I would probably have left with Michael, after having seen way too many gross out skits at church retreats, I'm not that good with that stuff.

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  2. I'm not sure about the spitting chewed cracker out - but the rest of the experiment was excellent!

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  3. This is a great experiment. I admit though that I settled to watching it on Sid rather than doing it myself. I am not much for stomach contents - luckily for us, Anna has hardly ever vomited (knock on wood here).

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  4. What a great experiment. Sammy would love this one I think!

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