STEM Fair Experiment

Last week, Brandt came home from school with an information packet all about the STEM Fair which was coming up.  It was a voluntary activity, but I encouraged him to participate, and he agreed it would be fun.  He looked at a couple of websites to see what project might be interesting to him, and opted to do a bread mold experiment.  He was to put three pieces of bread in plastic baggies, place each baggie in a separate spot, and then see which one grew mold first.

By Wednesday, when he checked his bread, he'd grown no mold at all.  None.  I looked at the instructions again, and it turns out, Brandt should have spritzed the bread with a bit of water before putting them in the baggies.  As he didn't spritz them at all, he only got three pieces of dry-ish bread.  That meant we had no real experiment to report on, and we had to scramble to come up with something else.  I suggested we make cookies using different types of flour and see what affect the flour had on the cookie.  Would a flour make the cookie puffier?  Would it change the taste?  Would it affect the texture?  Brandt agreed this would be fine, and asked for my help in making cookies on Thursday.

Before he got home, I made cookie dough five times, took pictures, and had cookies ready to bake.  We baked, placed cookies on plates, and then invited 20 people to test them for us.  We had ready and willing participants, because who doesn't want to eat a cookie?  Or five?  So much more appealing than bread mold!  Brandt gathered data, I helped him put together a poster, and off he went today to school, poster in hand.

Turns out, Brandt's project was good enough to allow him to move on to the district level.  He came home with four ribbons awarded for Thoroughness, Fun Display, Neatness, and Ability to Communicate.  He was delighted, and so were we.

 Brandt with his finished poster at the STEM Fair.  

  

 

All the students moving on to district

From left to right: ?? Dallin, Joseph, Casey, ? Kaylee, Lucy, Bekah, Brandt