Good afternoon to you all!
This week in Natural Science, we continued to learn about the different body systems in class. To further our learning of the digestive system, we went to the laboratory to create a model of the Digestive System Process and to experiment what type of liquids (Coca Cola vs. White Vinegar) would break down the food better in our models.
Starting from the beginning, our students modeled the mouth by tearing up the bread into small pieces like the teeth, then used the spray bottles to moisten the break just like the mouth´s saliva, after like the tongue we ¨swallowed¨ the bread into the body´s esphogus. The students created a tube-like structure using paper to create their esophogus which connected to a plastic bag that modeled the bag-like structure of the stomach. As they ¨swallowed¨ the bread, it went down the esphogus to the stomach. Once the bread hit the stomach, it was covered in the 2 different gastric juices, which were modeled by Coca Cola and White Vinegar. After, the students mimicked the breaking down of food by the muscles of the contracting stomach by squishing the bread and juices inside of the bag. Finally, the bags were left over night, just like the food that stays in our stomachs for 4 hours to further digest. The next day, we were able to make the conclusion for our experiment that the White Vinegar was able to break down the bread much better than the Coca Cola. Overall, it was a very successful model and experiment that the kids really enjoyed doing and solidified their understanding of the concepts!
Bye,
Cris and Sara
