The students were really excited about the lesson and held themselves to very strict guidelines! We talked about controlling the experiment and setting up parameters for how we would make sure that everyone was doing the same thing. The students defined what a proper lick was, how they would determine when they were at the center of the Tootsie roll, and whether or not the students should choose the flavor of the Tootsie Pop or take a random color. They chose to use tally marks as they licked and then recorded and compared their results. They asked a lot of great questions when they looked at the data. They wondered if there were a correlation between the number of licks and particular flavors. They even started questioning things like the size and surface area of the student's tongues as having an effect on the data. Using excel, they were able to play around with the numbers much more easily than if the had to do it by hand, so they weren't afraid to keep the questioning going.

This seems like a fun lesson to do! For those buildings (like mine) who have a "food ban" due to allergies, I recommend a game with a trash barrel and crumpled paper thrown in. Perhaps jumping rope or shooting a basketball.
I can imagine kids beginning to explore the possibilites on their own of tallying every day activities {walking down the hallway, how many bites to eat lunch}. In our enrichment classes we just learned about surveys, I overheard some of my Science students say they could put the data into Excel and make graphs! Exciting for me and surprising for the Enrichment teacher to learn grade 5 students had been exposed to Excel.

Hi Kathy,
My guess is that your students will always remember the concept of operational definitions and how they determined what a "proper lick" is. I love their follow-up questions and potential inquiries as well. Having a concrete, multisensory, fun introduction to excel should help them in all future work with the program.

I wonder if the students have been exposed to the how many licks commercial? This is a great experiment for scientific inquiry, hypothesis and controls. Sounds like they really enjoyed the process.

Kathy
This is quality control at its best. Looks like fun and lots of things for the kids to think about, plan and agree on. I would be interested to know what other discussions came about while doing the lesson.
Gwen

This sounds like it had so many fascinating aspects to it. The quality of the lick, counting, data keeping, graphing, etc.
What a fun way to look at the scientific method or you could even relate it to what dissolves the tootsie pop, maybe I could use this in properties of matter or chemistry.

Thanks, Kathy. This is a great example of how to draw students into some very serious science conversations through an investigation that on the surface seems to be pure whimsy.

Hey, i know this is a great experiment to use scientific method, because my students did it... and yes, they love it and the tootsie rolls! But, it didn' t occur to me to record the data with excell.... next time i will do that... Thanks,