Today we participated in an experiment that involved using our understanding of the seven characteristics of living things to classify some “mystery creatures” as living or non-living. The creatures looked like this:
I didn’t tell the students what they were until the end of the experiment. For you to follow along- they are Craisins in Mountain Dew Code Red! They move and have bubbles around them so you can only guess how wild our imaginations ran with this!!!
We first reviewed the seven characteristics to make sure we understood the qualifications for something to be living or not and then we filled out a sheet about our hypotheses and observations. We all thought they were living things initially. We had great ideas of how they showed respiration (which was actually carbonation in the soda), movement (the bubbles clung to the surface of the dried fruits and lifted them and dropped them as they popped at the top), and we even thought they reproduced (which was actually the sticky Craisins being separated by the carbonation). This lesson was a hoot!!! Listen to their intelligent ideas as they mull through the large question of “What is life?” and watch their priceless reaction to finding out they were not creatures from a distant land, but rather dried fruit in a soft drink...
Here is link to the video of part of the lesson:
Here are some pictures:
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