Could origami engineering be the next big thing in manufacturing?
The research of David Gracias certainly resembles the hobby of folding paper — as does the way, under his microscope, nano-materials fold themselves into cubes and pyramids.
But please don’t say it’s cute. “I hate the word cute; I’m not in the business of doing ‘cute,’” protests Gracias, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Until recently, “origami was treated like a game,” he says. The pioneers who incorporated the ancient Japanese art into high technology were both lonely and frequently mocked. “That a real scientist could do something useful with it was treated with skepticism. They would say, ‘How cute.’” Recalls University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign civil engineer Glaucio Paulino: “People did not believe in this idea. They said it looks funny.”
No longer. With practical implications ranging from minimally invasive surgical aids to highly efficient capture of solar energy and giant space telescopes that fit into a small payload, origami engineering has evolved into a well-funded fount of innovation. In 2009 the Gracias Laboratory created the world’s smallest precisely patterned cube, a self-folding structure just 100 nanometers long on each side. Two years later, in a collaboration with researchers at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, hundreds of self-folding microgrippers were deployed and then retrieved to successfully biopsy the bile duct of a live pig. These were the world’s first untethered submillimeter surgical devices.
Origami’s growth took a new turn in 2012, when the National Science Foundation launched the Origami Design for Integration of Self-assembling Systems for Engineering Innovation (ODISSEI) program and granted some $16 million to 14 universities, with millions more to come. Paulino, who helped raise the mast of ODISSEI, says the NSF was looking for “the next topic in engineering — a vision toward the future,” adding, “We felt origami was such a project.” One of the grant recipients, Max Shtein of the University of Michigan, strongly concurs. “We’re wading into a sea of possibilities,” says the materials science and engineering professor. “There are a million different applications for engineering out of this stuff.”
What these researchers are producing, however, rarely bears any resemblance to a Japanese paper crane.
Engineers typically fold sheets of shape-memory alloys or polymers into three-dimensional devices. The differences between these materials and paper highlight both the challenges and the possibilities of origami engineering. Unlike paper, these sheets can be coated in semiconductors and programmed to fold themselves. “We envision smart sheets, so that if you need anything you just tell the sheets, ‘Make me a plate or make me a cup; make me a chair or make me a tool,’ whatever that tool is,” says Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rus, along with engineering and math colleagues at MIT and Harvard, has already produced a small, hinged sheet that can fold itself into a boat and then into a paper-airplane shape.
But also unlike paper, most of these materials have meaningful — and troublesome — thickness. Paper creases; a polymer or a metal can at best make a tight bend. MIT mathematician Erik Demaine has been modeling origami math for more than 15 years and even earned a MacArthur “genius grant” for “solving difficult problems related to folding.” One of his early publications proved that “everything is foldable,” according to Demaine. “If you have a large enough sheet of material, you can bend it into any shape you want.” But, Demaine admits, “almost all the math models assume no thickness — we need algorithms to model thickness and minimize it in folding.”
Mary Frecker and graduate student Adrienne Crivaro discuss the design of a three dimensional origami structure. IMAGE COURTESY OF MARY FRECKER, PSU
Still, engineers are finding they have much to learn from the artists who work in paper. Shtein’s desk in Ann Arbor, Mich., is scattered with folded paper forms created by a collaborator from U of M’s School of Art and Design, Matt Shlian. “Watch this!” the engineer exclaims as he stretches a tessellated sheet of mountains and valleys that undulates in the air and then collapses between his palms. Shtein says that his own expertise in engineering materials had flattened his worldview until he began working with the artist. “He had three dimensions kind of hard-wired into him,” according to Shtein. Now he heads a $2 million NSF-funded research project, collaborating with four other engineers and Shlian to explore the folding of thin films into photonic devices.
The ODISSEI grant prospectus compelled engineering teams to find artistic coinvestigators, which was a mental stretch for some. “I was skeptical about stepping outside of our sandbox,” confesses chemical engineer Michael Dickey of North Carolina State University. Then he spent an afternoon touring the College of Design on campus. “I was surrounded on every side by 40 or 50 artistic costumes, each folded out of a single sheet of paper,” Dickey recalls. He snapped photographs on his phone and returned to the lab with three or four new ideas to apply to NC State’s ODISSEI research project. “I’m a convert,” he adds.
This blog post is excerpted from Folding Frontier, ASEE Prism magazine’s January 2013 cover story.
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Start your high school students’ New Year off right by helping them to Imagine Tomorrow! Washington State University is hosting a competition with a dozen different challenges and up to $100,000 in cash prizes. This will set them up not just for the entire year, but also for a lifetime of success!
Sponsored by Alaska Airlines and house in WSU’s Voiland College of Engineering and Architecure, Imagine Tomorrow is a problem-solving competition for 9-12th graders in groups of 2-5 people. Students will seek new ways to address grand challenges that will lead to a more sustainable world through such things as facilitating the transition to alternative energy sources. They will research complex issues in four topic areas, then innovate technologies, designs, or plans to mobilize behavior. They forge connections in their communities and create positive change. “In this energy competition, as in life, solutions are limited only by imagination.”
Without a doubt, the world has changed. Kids today have to worry about completely different things than the previous generation, with hackers attacking Internet-connected dolls, tablets, and desks.
As the world becomes more connected to those at ever-younger ages, it’s more important than ever to teach kids responsible online use from an early age—and that includes early thinking on how to counteract people who would do harm.
The CyberPatriot Elementary School Cyber Education Initiative (ESCEI) is a set of three fun, interactive learning modules aimed at increasing awareness of students in grades K-6 about online safety and cybersecurity principles. The program kit comes with curriculum on these topics to supplement the material presented in the interactive learning modules.
One of the interactive learning modules, Security Showdown, is recommended for K-3 students, and the other two, Clean_Up and DangerBots, are recommended for 4th-6th graders. Parents, guardians, teachers, and volunteers are all encouraged to request copies of the ESCEI materials and use the curriculum to introduce their K-6 students to online safety and cybersecurity.
The modules are free! Fill out this form to request them for your classroom.
In this activity, students in grades 3 to 8 learn about applied forces and elements of the engineering design process by creating a pop-up card or book.
Grade level: 3-8
Time: 50 (for card) – 120 minutes (for book)
Engineering Connection
Just like forces travel from your hand to move an object, engineers want forces to “travel” in their designs as well. For example, in the construction of buildings and bridges, engineers make sure the forces acting upon the structures (people, washing machines, trucks, wind, snow, etc.) will be safely transferred to foundations in the ground. During the engineering design process, they do this by adding up all the potential forces that could be applied to a structure and drawing free-body diagrams — drawings that help to visualize how forces act upon an object — to ensure that the structure will not collapse.
Learning Objectives
After this activity, students should be able to:
Define a force and identify several forces in their environment.
Understand how forces work in a pop-up book.
Use brainstorming as a means to generate ideas for a work of art.
Use the engineering design process to create a product for a client.
Standards
International Technology and Engineering Educators Association
H. Modeling, testing, evaluating, and modifying are used to transform ideas into practical solutions. [Grades 6 – 8]
H. Apply a design process to solve problems in and beyond the laboratory-classroom.
J. Make two-dimensional and three-dimensional representations of the designed solution.
Next Generation Science Standards
Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem. [Grades 3 – 5]
Introduction/Motivation
Have you ever read a pop-up book? How do they work? When were they invented?
The first movable books were created for educational purposes as early as the 15th century, almost 500 years ago! One of the first books was an anatomy book that used flaps for each layer of the human body. This book was created in 1553 by Andreas Vesalius. People start creating movable books for recreational purposes hundreds of years later. This time, the books used flaps to reveal different adventure scenes in a story.
During the 19th century, the London publishing house of S. & J. Fuller mass-produced the first paper dolls. Lotha Meggendorfer, a German artist created the first multiple and simultaneously moving parts book. He used an intricate system of copper wires and paper tabs to create this effect.
Three-dimensional books, in which the images stood up from the pages, were created after 1929.
Engineers and artists think about forces when designing or building something. What is a force? (Answer: A push or pull on an object.) Not all forces occur naturally like wind and gravity. People can create forces using energy that originates from the food they eat. This occurs when we push someone on a swing, use our feet to push a skateboard or pull someone in a wagon. When we read pop-up books we apply very small forces (pushes or pulls) to tabs and flaps to make them move.
Engineers and artists take into consideration the impact of man-made forces on an object they design, as well as natural ones. For example, is it important for an engineer to consider the impact of the accumulated weight of many people as they walk across a floor on the second story of a building? Even the smallest forces need to be taken into account. Any push or pull that affects the balance of a structure, large or small, must be thought about by engineers and artists during the design and creation process. In making pop-up or moving books, the creators are called “paper engineers.”
Materials
Paper (8.5 x 11 inch copier or construction paper)
Tape
Scissors
Glue stick
Ruler
General art supplies for decorating & writing messages
For the entire class to share:
Several pop-up or movable books from the library or home
Stapler (or needle and thread to stitch through several sheets of paper)
Fold the paper in half. On the crease side of the paper, make two straight, inch-long cuts.
Define the tab: Bend the tab up and over, and fold it flat.
Make the box: Push the tab into the card. This turns it into a box that sticks into the card. Once the box is in the card, close the card and press the box flat. • Open the card and check that the box pops up.
Add a character: Glue a drawing or photo onto the box.
Add a cover and message: Glue on a cover to hide the cut you made. Add a message and decorate your card.
Activity Extension
Make a fancier design by using two or more boxes. Or make several boxes that are different lengths and widths. This lets characters pop up in different places, like near the front and near the back of the card.
Procedure (For Book)
This activity is suggested to take place during two, one-hour class periods on two different days. Day 1 is for research, writing, drawing, brainstorming, planning and organizing. Day 2 is for construction of the pop-up book.
Before the Activity
Gather materials and bring to class example pop-up books from the library or home.
Divide the class into teams of two students each.
Research: Have the student teams browse through the pop-up books, paying careful attention to why and how parts of the book move, and where the forces are applied.
The Design Process. Write on the board the main steps in the engineering design process, and discuss with the students.
With the Students
On Day 1, start a discussion about pop-up books by asking if anyone has read a pop-up book. Do you know how they work? Take guesses on when they were first invented. (Answer: 500 years ago.)
Information gathering. List on the board all the different design techniques found in the example pop-up books. (Possible techniques: Revolving disks, push/pull tabs, lifts/flaps.) Also note that some books create movement only by the reader moving a disk, tab or flap, while others move simply with the motion of turning a page.
Understand the science. Review with the students how the forces travel from the student’s hands along the tabs or through the book pages to cause movement. It may be helpful to draw arrows that represent these forces on the board (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. A gentle force with a hand causes movement in a pop-up book.
With the remaining class time, have the student teams write a short story that they will illustrate in their pop-up book. Decide if the book will be a simple children’s story created for a child they know, or perhaps a comic book designed for themselves. The story length can be five sentences to five pages. Remind students that some books have no words or very few words; paper engineers design books so the pictures (illustrations and movement) tell the story.
An important part of the engineering design process is creating a diagram of your design. This step helps make the project real so decisions can be made and refined for a better end product. Have the students divide their story into approximately five pages, and draw rough sketches (words and pictures) to lay out each page.
Brainstorming is important in the engineering design process. Working in a team helps everyone come up with creative ideas. Have the students brainstorm unique ways to make their pictures move. Which illustrations will move? In what way? What movement(s) help to tell the story best? Find ideas in the example pop-up books and talk with other students about possible ideas. Brainstorm creative and silly ideas that use the materials available.
Planning ahead is a very important part of the engineering design process. Why? (Answers: It helps with the collection of materials, prevents the wasting of materials, saves time during the construction phase, and keeps projects organized so other people can understand what is going on.) Have the students plan how they will make some of their illustrations move. What will be on the page background? What will be on the flap or tabs? What will be the tab/flap shapes? Where will be the folds? How will the moving pieces be attached? Practice with a prototype (or mock-up), until it works the way you want. Use the suggestions provided in the How to Make Tabs and How to Make Flaps attachments.
On Day 2, continue with the pop-up book making process. After the students have shown they have a good grasp on how they want to complete their project, they can begin the construction phase.
Share the construction tasks among the team members. The first step is to create the base pages of the book. Have each student team figure out how many pieces of paper they need based on the number of finished pages in their book when the 8.5 x 11″ paper is folded in half. Plan to include a cover page and a title page. For instance if a story is six pages long, the team needs three pieces of copy paper for the story, one piece for the title page and one piece of colored construction paper for the cover.
Have students stack their book page papers, placing the construction piece on the bottom (see Figure 2).
Next, have students fold the stack of papers in half so that the construction paper is on the outside, creating a front and back cover (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Construction details for the pop-up book.
To make a binding, either staple the fold of the book, or use a needle and thread to stitch the pages together (see Figure 2).
Next, the students may proceed to add the story, illustrations and moving parts to the blank book. Create a title page that includes the components found on the title page of other books (title, author(s), illustrator(s), location, date).
When all students have completed their books, have each team present them to the class. They should be able to describe the type of forces that cause their book parts to move. Discuss the creative ideas used in the pop-up books. Do they function well? Do they have any ideas for improvement? Who is the end user of their book? How did the steps of the engineering design process work for your team? Deliver the pop-up books to younger students and see how they are received.
Safety Issues
Students should be careful when handling scissors.
If needle and thread are used, students should be careful when handling the needles.
Troubleshooting Tips
Since some students get frustrated coming up with their own designs, it may be helpful to check out some “how-to make your own pop-up books” from the library or search the Internet for helpful ideas to supply to students. See the Reference section for some book suggestions.
Activity Extensions
Ask the students where else engineers want forces to “travel.” For example, in the construction of buildings and bridges, engineers want to make sure the forces (people, desks, cars, snow, wind, weight of the walls and roof, etc.) can be safely transferred to solid foundations. They do this by adding up all the potential forces that could be applied to a structure and drawingfree-body diagrams — drawings that help visualize how forces act upon an object, This method helps engineers design structures that do not collapse under the impact of many forces. Ask students to research free-body diagrams on the Internet and report back to class with an example.
Have the student research the history of pop-up books and write a one-page paper.
Have the students brainstorm about other art forms that use moving pieces. For homework, have them create a piece of moving art, and explain which forces make it move and why.
Invite a “paper engineer” to speak to your class.
Activity Scaling
For younger students (grades 3-4), print out instructions from one of the how-to books and stick to simpler flap designs.
Additional Resources
Make Your Own Pop-Ups Best-selling children’s author Robert Sabuda’s website shows how to make a variety of pop-ups, from bats to ships to witches… even the Emerald City of Oz.
Paper Engineering Animation and video galleries are part of the Smithsonian’s exhibition entitled Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn, which presented more than 50 examples of “action-packed constructions and inspired works of art spanning 500 years.”
Folding Frontier ASEE Prism magazine January 2013 cover story on origami engineering.
Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn. [YouTube 7:50] The making of a pop-up book, featuring book artist Chuck Fischer and paper engineer Bruce Foster from the Smithsonian’s Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn exhibition, which was on display in the Libraries Exhibition Gallery in the National Museum of American History through September 2011.
The Magic Moment. [Vimeo 7:30] German paper engineer Peter Dahmen creates magical, moving sculptures out of paper.
Activity courtesy of PBS Kids’ Design Squad Nation. View episode on YouTube [2:25]
Summary
In this activity, upper elementary students working alone or in pairs learn about electrical circuits and the design process by dismantling a “singing” greeting card and using the parts to build an alarm system.
Grade level: 3-6
Time: 50 minutes
Engineering connection
A circuit is the path along which electricity travels. When all parts of the circuit are connected, electricity flows. A break anywhere in the circuit stops electricity flowing. In one position, the switch breaks the circuit. When that happens, the electricity stops flowing, and there’s no music. In the other position, the switch completes the circuit. When that happens, the electricity flows, and music blasts!
Learning Objectives
After this activity, students should be able to:
Define, recognize, build, and draw a closed circuit.
Explain why a closed circuit is required for any electrical device to operate.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards
Energy: Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another. [Grade 4]
International Technology and Engineering Educators Association
D. Tools, machines, products, and systems use energy in order to do work. [Grades 3 – 5]
Materials
Musical greeting card. (Before buying a card, ask around to see if someone has one to give you.)
Scissors
Tape
String
Hiding place
Procedure
Click HERE for PDF in Spanish, and HERE for English.
Find the electronics: Remove the part of the card covering the electronics.
Cut open the inside cover of the greeting card to expose the circuitry.
Cut out the electronics
Draw a line around the electronics. Include the tab on the other side of the card. This tab controls the switch that turns the song on and off.
Cut the line.
Make the song start and stop by moving the tab back and forth. This opens and closes the circuit.
Look closely to figure out how the switch works. Find the battery and the speaker.
4. Add a pull-string
Tape a string to the tab.
Test the string by pulling it to open the switch.
Did the music start? If not, check that nothing is blocking the switch.
5. Tape your card in a secret place
Try something with a lid, like a lunchbox, box, or cookie jar. Or find something that opens, like a locker, cabinet, or refrigerator door.
Tape the card in place.
6 Tape the string so that when the jar or door opens, it gets pulled. This will open the switch.
7. Set the trap.
8. Gotcha!
Activity Extensions
Booby-trap other things. Lockers, books, refrigerator, drawer, medicine cabinet, toilet handle, etc.
Wear it. Mount your hacked greeting card to a band that you can wear on your arm or leg or under your hat. Attach a long string to the switch. Secure the card to your arm, leg, etc. Then put on something that fits loosely, like sweat pants or a sweatshirt. Run the string through the garment so you can grab the end. When you want the music to blast, pull the string to open the switch. SURPRISE!
Additional Resources
Activities
Completing the Circuit [Grades 3 – 5] Students build basic circuit from wire, lightbulb, and power source. [From Teachengineering.org]
Switcheroo [Grades 3-5] Students construct a simple switch and determine what objects and what types of materials can be used to close a switch in a circuit and light a light bulb. [From Teachengineering.org]
How to Hack an Audio Greeting Card Circuit bending, the art of modifying existing electronics such as children’s toys or inexpensive, battery-powered musical instruments to create unique musical or video instruments, requires no prior knowledge of electronics. There’s even a video art, called glitch, made from hacking battery-powered video devices.
Computer programming is a language, one that an Atlanta-based tech company chief believes every elementary student should get a head start on learning.
He’s even putting his money where his mouth is, launching a nationwide contest that would send a master coding instructor to train K-8 teachers in a high-poverty school district for up to a year.
Ari Ioaniddes, president and chief software architect of Emerald Data Solutions, is investing up to $1 million in what is billed as a “breakthrough computer science program designed to integrate coding into elementary classrooms nationwide.”
One of the biggest challenges to teaching computer coding – other than the widespread misperception that the subject is too hard for young studnets – is the lack of trained teachers. Emerald Data’s solution was to offer the services of award-winning educator Grant Smith, a trailblazer who developed a computer coding curriculum guide and taught thousands of elementary students to program in his high-poverty Avondale, Arizona district and elsewhere.
School districts can apply for a grant to have Smith reside and work in the district for a year or for a semester, with a semester of follow-up training. Applications are due Dec. 31, 2015.
The company also is offering Smith’s curriculum, now being implemented in Park City, Utah, for free to schools seeking to implement computer programming.
It may take more than the transformation of a single school district to change mind-sets. According to a Gallup & Google report, “Searching for Computer Science: Access and Barriers in U.S. K-12 Education,” 91 percentof parents want their child’s school to teach computer science and 85 percent think it’s just as or more important as math and English. However, fewer than 8 percent of school superintendents and principals believe that “demand is high” for computer science.
EarthEcho International, a nonprofit environmental education and advocacy group founded by the grandchildren of legendary underwater explorer Jacques Yves Cousteau, invites young environmental leaders ages 15 to 22 to apply for its inaugural EarthEcho International Youth Leadership Council.
The group seeks up to 15 young people to:
provide valuable insight and expertise in the development of EarthEcho International’s programs;
lead initiatives to engage young people in conservation work in their communities; and
develop programs to help support EarthEcho’s mission of inspiring young people worldwide to act now for a sustainable future.
Through this role, Youth Leadership Council members will have the opportunity to serve in an advisory capacity and gain an understanding of the operations of an international nonprofit organization, interact with leaders in the fields of conservation and education, and gain access to experts and resources to explore personal conservation interests.
Applications for this program are due December 31, 2015, and can be accessed here.
He revolutionized safety in auto racing following the death of legendary racer Dale Earnhardt in 2001. Now Dean Sicking, a professor of engineering at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, is tackling football helmets in an effort to reduce brain injuries at every level of the sport.
His goal: reduce concussions by 75 percent not only by using new materials but also by changing the way football helmets are tested. Instead of linear models of force and motion, Sicking’s lab studies the impact on players’ heads using crash-test dummies on a sled. It may be the world’s most accurate proving ground for helmet safety. See video.
“Much of the football helmet industry sticks to the mantra, ‘We can’t prevent concussions’ and that’s where they stop,” Sicking told CBS News‘s national college football correspondent Jon Solomon. “They try to improve themselves on arcane procedures that are designed to prevent skull fractures but doesn’t do anything to prevent concussions.”
Sicking’s work builds on the SAFER barrier – for Steel And Foam Energy Reduction – used by all major speedways today. Made of hollow steel tubing with foam padding in front of it, the collapsible wall buffers the race track’s concrete walls, absorbing most of the G-forces in a collision.
Since SAFER’s debut, fatalities and serious injuries have fallen to near zero.
Sicking’s patented technologies also can be found in guardrails on the federal highway system, saving 1,000 lives per year he estimates.
Sicking believes “the same thing can be done with helmets if we’re willing to look at a system and apply all available technologies.” He says the hard outer shell of a helmet is the same problem that concrete barriers posed to race car drivers a decade ago.
Concussions are a major concern for football players from high school to the National Football League. Successive blows to the head have sidelined star players like former West Virginia quarterback Clint Trickett, 24, and can lead to permanent impairment, early dementia, and even death.
Researchers at Boston University have found strong links between concussions in professional football and a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The B.U. team found CTE in 87 of 91 former NFL players tested. Overall, CTE showed up in the brain tissue of 131 out of 165 individuals who, before they died, played football professionally, in college, or in high school.
The NFL recently proposed a $1 billion program to reduce head injuries and compensate disabled players, but not those with CTE. The league’s efforts to suppress forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu’s research on brain damage suffered its players is the subject of a 2015 film starring Will Smith. It’s based on the 2009 CQ exposé Game Brain.
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Activity from Teachengineering.org is part of a lesson on the importance of smell developed by Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering.
Grade level: 3-7
Time: 90 minutes
Summary
Student teams in grades 3 to 7 learn the key role that smell plays in being able to recognize foods by conducting taste tests while holding and not holding their noses. They then create bar graphs comparing the number of correct identifications for the two experimental conditions.
Engineering Connection
Chemical and food engineers use information about how people sense taste to develop artificial flavors closer to the real flavors they are designed to mimic.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards
Use a model to describe that animals’ receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways. [Grade 4]
Common Core State Standards for Mathematics
Draw a scaled picture graph and a scaled bar graph to represent a data set with several categories. Solve one- and two-step “how many more” and “how many less” problems using information presented in scaled bar graphs. For example, draw a bar graph in which each square in the bar graph might represent 5 pets. [Grade 3]
International Technology and Engineering Educators Association
Compare, contrast, and classify collected information in order to identify patterns. [Grades 3 – 5]
Prerequisite Knowledge
An understanding of what a biological adaptation is.
Ability to construct a bar graph (helpful, but not essential).
Learning Objectives
After this activity, students should be able to:
Explain the importance of the sense of smell to the ability of humans to recognize familiar foods.
Explain why it is adaptive for an animal to use its sense to identify food as being either nutritious or noxious.
Create and interpret bar graphs comparing quantities of different items
Image: USDA scientist Mary Strem with visitor smelling cocoa husks at the Sustainable Perennial Crop Lab in Beltsville, Md.
Materials List
Yogurt or pudding, 4 different flavors, 8 to 12 ounces each (use the larger amount for class sizes greater than 24); if using yogurt, choose types that are “blended” and do not contain bits of fruit that might provide clues due to texture. It is not necessary to have all four flavors be either yogurt or pudding; for example, it would be fine to have two different flavors of yogurt and two different flavors of pudding. Note: See the Safety Issues section regarding food allergies.
4 cup or bowls capable of holding at least 8 ounces
~100 plastic spoons
4 watches with second hands
4 cardboard shoe boxes or similarly sized boxes without lids
4 towels, t-shirts or pieces of fabric that are just large enough to drape over the boxes
4 trash receptacles
16 copies of the Tasty Experiment Datasheet, give each group four datasheets, one for each of the four stations
Introduction/Motivation
After completion of the Can You Taste It? associated lesson, students should be sufficiently motivated to conduct the experiment, and need no further introduction.
Procedure
Make sure all students know how to use the watches to determine when 15 seconds have elapsed. Explain that this is the amount of time that students are allowed before they must state the flavor of the food they just tasted—or else state that they are unable to identify it. Since students take turns being the timers, everyone must be able to determine when 15 seconds have elapsed.
Explain the basic procedure for the experiment, as follows:
Point out that the room will be set up with four tables to serve as tasting stations, and the class will be divided up into four groups. Each group rotates through the four stations (and each group uses four datasheets, one at each station). At each station, two members of the group sit on one side of the table. One of these two members serves as the “feeder,” because s/he feeds the food to the other students, who try to identify it. In front of the feeder is the food to be tasted; it is inside a box that is turned on its side so the rest of the team cannot see the food. One at a time, the other members of the team come to the table.The feeder puts a small amount (about one-half to three-quarters of a teaspoon) of food on a clean spoon, and gently feeds the student.
Meanwhile, the other member seated at the table is the “timer.” This student tells the feeder when to put the food in the taster’s mouth, and then announces when time is up 15 seconds later. Sometime during that 15 seconds the taster must identify the food, or else “give up.”
Mention that that the taster must state his or her answer very quietly, so that other students who have not yet tasted that food do not hear. Also mention that the taster must identify both the type of food and its flavor. For example, if the taster thinks the food is Jello®, s/he says orange Jello®, cherry Jello®, or whatever flavor s/he thinks it is. Once the taster has given his or her response, the timer and presenter record that response on the datasheet provided.
Make sure that all students know how to fill in the datasheet, starting with identifying the tasting station number, and then listing the names of the team members that hold their noses in the left column. They enter the names of the team members that do the tasting without holding their noses into the third column, and once the taste-testing begins, they enter response of each student into the appropriate “Response” column. If the taster does not give a response within the 15 seconds, the response is recorded as “none.”
Divide the class into fourths, with each quarter comprising a team. If necessary, ask for help in rearranging the classroom to set up the four tasting stations.
At each station place one-fourth of the spoons, a trash receptacle for the used spoons, a watch and a box containing a cup or bowl of food to be tasted, but cover the box with the fabric while it is in transit so that students are not able to see its contents. Also place a copy of the datasheet at each station, and a placard with a number between one and four to indicate the number of that particular tasting station.
Have each team choose two of its members to serve as the timer and the presenter for the first station. Have the remaining team members decide which half to hold their noses and close their eyes, and which half to only close their eyes. For teams with an odd number of students, have the extra student hold his or her nose and close his or her eyes while tasting. Be sure to explain that as they rotate through the different stations, every student will have an opportunity to do both types of tastings, and most will have an opportunity to be the presenter and/or the timer.
Body of Activity:
Part 1: Doing the taste tests
Once the class is clear on what is to happen, assign each team to a station and let them begin the taste tests. Watch closely to see that directions are being followed, and answer any procedural questions that may arise.
When each team has finished at its first station and filled out its datasheet completely, place a new datasheet at each station and make sure the box containing the food is covered with the fabric. Then have the teams rotate in one direction to the next nearest tasting station. There, they choose a new presenter and timer, and divide the remainder of the team into “smelling” and “non-smelling” halves, as they did for the first station. Then they conduct the taste tests and record their data.
Repeat this procedure for the third and fourth tasting stations. Remind students to keep their voices as quiet as possible, and not share their food identifications with other teams as they rotate to new stations. If necessary, explain that giving away a food type or flavor would ruin the fun—and make the experiment invalid.
Part 2: Graphing and interpreting the data
Once the tasting experiment has been completed, announce or write on the classroom board the foods and flavors for each of the four tasting stations. Then have each team look over its four datasheets. What do students notice about the data? Were students more successful at identifying the foods when they could smell them? If so, was there a big difference in the number of correct responses between the able-to-smell versus not-able-to-smell groups? Were the foods at some stations more difficult to identify, based on the number of incorrect responses, than the foods at other stations? If so, was this consistent across all the teams?
Explain to the class that bar graphs let us see at a glance the answers to these questions. Give each person a sheet of graph paper, and show the class how to set up the axes to make a bar graph of the results for the first tasting station. Make the graph consist of two pairs of vertical bars. The first pair shows the results of the able-to-smell tasters. Within that pair, the first bar shows the number of correct responses, and second shows the number of incorrect responses. The second pair of bars shows the results of the not-able-to-smell tasters. Again, the first bar shows the number of correct responses, and second shows the number of incorrect responses. Then have students choose a crayon or marker color to fill in both of the correct-responses bars, and a second color for the incorrect response bars. The use of colors means that they need to add a legend to the graph indicating what the colors represent. Be sure to ask why using the two different colors in the graph is a good idea. Expect students to respond that colors help to make any differences in the successes of the two different tasting groups more noticeable.
If students have not already done so, make sure that their y-axis is labeled appropriately, such as “number of tasters,” and the x-axis includes labels beneath each pair of bars indicating whether they represent the able-to-smell responses or the not-able-to-smell responses. Also point out that all graphs need informative titles. Ask the class to come up with one. Examples, ones that are fairly specific, might be: “Results from Food Tasting Experiments” or “Food Taste Experiments With and Without Smell.” Next, point out that the graphs need to indicate the station number, the source of the data. Include this information as part of the title or as a separate label elsewhere.
Once students have completed their graphs for the first tasting station, provide more graph paper and have them construct similar graphs for each of the other three stations. As they are working, circulate through the room and ask what they think their graphs show about people’s ability to taste foods under different circumstances.
When teams have finished the four graphs, have each team combine the results for all four stations. In other words, ask students to determine the total number of correct responses from all the able-to-smell tastings that occurred in their team, and the total number of correct responses from the not-able-to-smell tastings that occurred. Then have them do the same for the incorrect responses, and have them graph these results on a new sheet of data paper. Expect the bars on these graphs to be much higher than on the previous graphs.
By now, each student willl have completed five graphs. From each team, choose (or have the team choose) one graph from each of the five types. Tape them to the classroom board or mount them on a bulletin board so that results of each station are all together in one spot, and the combined results (the last graphs made) are together. At this point, any similarities and differences between the teams’ results become apparent, so ask students to point these out to you. If any noticeable differences exist between teams, ask why they think these might have occurred. Finally, ask students what they conclude about whether or not smell is important to the ability to recognize and identify foods, and ask whether or not their hypothesis was supported.
Part 3: Relating the experiment to human adaptations
Ask students what they remember from the earlier discussion about the adaptive value of being able to recognize and remember whether certain things are good to eat, that is, nutritious, or bad to eat, that is, noxious. Students may be interested to know that when babies are just starting to eat soft foods (after a few months of drinking only milk), they behave much the same way our early ancestors probably did when finding a strange berry or unknown root. They knew from experience that some things that looked like edible might instead make them sick, so they would only take a small sample at first. If they did not get sick after several hours, they would then eat a larger quantity —and of course, remember what it looked and tasted like for future reference. Similarly, infants refuse to eat more that a bite or two of a food they have not tasted before, even though the parent knows that it is a safe and healthy food. The second time the infant is offered the food, it will eat a little more. After that, it will be willing to eat full portions. This cautious behavior when experiencing new foods seems to be instinctive (one we are born with) in humans.
After this brief discussion of adaptive behavior, ask the class a harder question: what is the difference between the sense of taste and the sense of smell? Give them some time to share their opinions, and then draw a map of the tongue’s upper surface on the board, showing the regions that respond to the sweet, salty, sour, and bitter aspects of food. Then ask the class how the tongue can distinguish between different flavors of pudding, which are all sweet, if it has only the ability to distinguish between, say, sweet versus salty foods? Since it can’t, explain how the sense of smell works, especially as it relates to eating. Finally, conclude the activity and lesson by pointing out that not only is food tasting behavior adaptive, but the structures that allow us to taste foods—which includes smell—are adaptations of the body that have helped humans survive for thousands of years.
Check for food allergies well in advance of the activity. Since the quantity of dairy products involved in the tasting experiment is extremely small, this should not be a problem for students with lactose intolerances. Nevertheless, consult with parents if you do have lactose-intolerant students in the class. If you are advised not to allow them to participate, substitute pureed fruit baby food products for the experiment.
Make sure all surfaces in the tasting areas are scrupulously clean before beginning.
All students should wash their hands thoroughly before and after serving as “feeders.” You may provide bottles of liquid hand-sanitizer at each station as an alternative, but be sure to check that students use them in such as way as to be effective.
Troubleshooting Tips
Make sure that students state their food identification responses before they release their noses for the not-able-to-smell components of the tastings. Responses given after releasing their noses should not be counted as correct responses, but instead should be marked on the datasheets as “none.”
Demonstrate the correct amount of food (about one-half to three-quarters of a teaspoon) that feeders should put on the spoon; if they use too much it may slide off the spoon before it reaches the taster’s mouth, or the food may run out before the end of the experiment.
Remind students not to share information about what a food is with students who have not yet had an opportunity to taste it.
Emphasize that the point of the experiment is not to get the food answers “right,” but to find out if it is harder to tell what a food is if you can’t smell it. Then ask if this information about the sense of smell is consistent with the results they got in their experiment. To use a pun, does it make sense that food identification is difficult or impossible without the sense of smell?
Investigating Questions
As students are conducting the experiment, ask the following questions:
What do you notice about the responses so far?
Are students more successful at identifying the foods when they can smell them? If so, is there a big difference in the number of correct responses between the able-to-smell versus not-able-to-smell groups, or is it only a small difference?
So far, does it look like your hypothesis is going to be supported?
Do the foods at some stations seem more difficult to identify than the foods at other stations? If so, why do you think that might be?
At the end of the concluding discussion, ask:
Why do many people complain that when they have a bad cold that food seems to lose its taste?
Assessment
Example quiz or discussion questions:
A fellow student tells you that he is going to give you either a piece of a plain brownie, or a piece of a brownie containing walnuts, but you have to close your eyes and hold your nose while you chew and swallow it. If you can correctly identify which piece he has given you, he will then give you the rest of the brownie. Do you think you will be able to correctly identify which piece he has given you? Why do you think that?
Another student tells you that she is going to give you either a spoonful of cherry Jello® or a spoonful of orange Jello®. However, if you want more than a spoonful, you will have to close your eyes and hold your nose while you eat it, and then correctly identify the flavor. Do you think you will be able to do it? Why do you think that?
Why do some people think that food has less flavor when they have a stuffy nose from a bad cold?
Create a bar graph similar to the ones students created, but showing the results of a different experiment, such as the one shown in the attachment test-graph.gif. Then ask the following questions:
What was the total number of correct answers given by students who studied for the spelling test?
What was the total number of incorrect answers given by students who studied for the spelling test?
What was the total number of correct answers given by students who did not study for the spelling test?
What was the total number of incorrect answers given by students who did not study for the spelling test?
What can you conclude from this experiment?
What hypothesis do you think this experiment was testing?
Activity Extensions
Many elderly people complain that food is not as flavorful to them as it was in their younger years. Have students do some library and/or internet research to try to find out if indeed this is reported to happen, and if so, why it happens. They could also survey older people, asking them if they find food less flavorful than it was when they were younger. Also, see if you can locate a dozen or more elderly volunteers (perhaps grandparents of students) willing to visit the classroom. They can serve as the tasters for the same experiment that students performed on themselves, and students can compare results from the elderly group to their own results. This time students would be testing the hypothesis, “Elderly people will not be able to identify food as well as fourth-graders can.”
Additional Resources
Flavor Chemistry. ChemMatters video on the science behind the taste and smell of food [YouTube 5:05]
But also unlike paper, most of these materials have meaningful — and troublesome — thickness. Paper creases; a polymer or a metal can at best make a tight bend. MIT mathematician Erik Demaine has been modeling origami math for more than 15 years and even earned a MacArthur “genius grant” for “solving difficult problems related to folding.” One of his early publications proved that “everything is foldable,” according to Demaine. “If you have a large enough sheet of material, you can bend it into any shape you want.” But, Demaine admits, “almost all the math models assume no thickness — we need algorithms to model thickness and minimize it in folding.”
eptical about stepping outside of our sandbox,” confesses chemical engineer Michael Dickey of North Carolina State University. Then he spent an afternoon touring the College of Design on campus. “I was surrounded on every side by 40 or 50 artistic costumes, each folded out of a single sheet of paper,” Dickey recalls. He snapped photographs on his phone and returned to the lab with three or four new ideas to apply to NC State’s ODISSEI research project. “I’m a convert,” he adds.
