Eating Nails for Breakfast Experiment
Experiment
- It’s time to mix up a batch of cereal soup to investigate the claim of iron in your breakfast cereal. Pour the contents of the box of Total cereal into the zipper-lock bag.
- Fill the bag 3/4-full with water. Carefully seal the bag, leaving an air pocket inside. You can mix the cereal and the water by squeezing and smooshing the bag until the contents become a brown, soupy mixture. Allow the mixture to sit for an hour.
- Make sure the bag is tightly sealed! (Double bag it if you think it is needed.) Put the magnet in the palm of one of your hands and lay the bag of cereal soup flat on top of the magnet.
- Put your other hand on top of the bag and slowly slosh the contents of the bag in a circular motion for 15 or 20 seconds. The idea is to attract any tiny bits of metallic iron in the cereal to the magnet.
- Flip the bag and magnet over so the magnet is on top. Gently squeeze the bag to lift the magnet a little above the cereal soup. Don’t move the magnet just yet. Look closely at the edges of the magnet where it’s touching the bag. You should be able to see tiny black specks on the inside of the bag around the edges of the magnet. That’s the iron!
Keep one end of the magnet touching the bag and move it in little circles. As you do, the iron will gather into a bigger clump and be much easier to see. Few people have ever noticed iron in their food, so you can really impress your friends with this one. When you’re finished, simply pour the cereal soup down the drain and rinse the bag.
Materials List
- Small box of Total® cereal
- Ceramic bar magnet
- Zipper-lock bag
- Water
- Adult supervision
How Does It Work?
Many breakfast cereals are fortified with food-grade iron particles (metallic iron) as a mineral supplement. Total® cereal is currently the only major brand of cereal that claims to contain 100% of your recommended daily allowance (RDA) of iron. The chemical symbol for iron is Fe. Metallic iron is digested in the stomach and eventually absorbed in the small intestine. If all of the iron from your body was extracted, you’d have enough iron to make only two small nails.
Take it Further!
Experiment
- Place a flake or two of Total cereal onto the petri dish. Crush them into tiny pieces with your fingers and form a single layer of crumbs on the dish.
- Bring the magnet close to the layer of crumbs (but don’t touch any). See if you can get any of the pieces to move because of the magnet being close. Take your time. If you get a piece to move without touching it, that piece may contain some metallic iron.
- Firmly press the magnet directly onto the crumbs but don’t move it.Lift it up and look underneath to see if anything is clinging to the magnet. Several little pieces may be stuck there. Is it the magnet being attracting iron or just sticky cereal? It could be the iron. Throw away the small pile of cereal and clean off the magnet.
Materials List
- A few flakes of Total® cereal
- Ceramic bar magnet
- 4” petri dish
- Water
- Adult supervision
Take it Even Further!
Experiment
- Pour cold water onto a plate and float a few flakes on the surface.
- Hold the magnet close to (but not touching) a flake, and see if the flake moves toward the magnet. (The movement may be very slight, so be patient but keep your eyes open.) With practice, you can pull the flakes across the water, spin them, and even link them together in a chain. Hmmm… there must be something that’s responding to the magnet. Could it be metallic iron?… in your cereal?
Materials List
- A few flakes of Total® cereal
- Ceramic bar magnet
- 4” petri dish
- Water
- Adult supervision
Additional Information
Iron is found in a very important component of your blood: hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the compound in red blood cells that collects oxygen from your lungs so that it can be utilized by your body. It’s the iron in hemoglobin that allows oxygen-rich blood to have its bright red appearance.
A diet deficient in iron can result in fatigue, reduced resistance to diseases, and increased heart and respiratory rates. Food scientists say that a healthy adult requires about 18 mg of iron each day. So, as you can see, iron is a very important part of what you and your friends and family need to stay healthy. Eat up! Cereal for dinner? Or would that be nails for breakfast?
Here’s a way to test if you have an iron deficiency. Try taking a 14-karat gold ring and drawing lines on your face. If black or dark green marks appear, you have an iron deficiency. Interestingly enough, most men will not be able to make these marks appear, for some reason this test only seems to work on women. This phenomenon is not fully explained, but it is thought that the hemoglobin in the blood is attracted to the gold, causing minor blood vessels to burst in the affected skin, resulting in a black or dark green bruise-like color. Don’t worry… the bruise will go away!
Science Fair Connection
Discovering that there is iron in the cereal is pretty cool, but it isn’t a science fair project. You can create a science fair project by identifying a variable, or something that changes, in this experiment. Let’s take a look at some of the variable options that might work:
- Compare how much iron is in different kinds of cereal. In your kit you have two kinds, which has the most iron?
- In your tests, be sure to use the same amount of cereal, the same amount and kind of water, and the same magnet in your tests so that you standardize the conditions as much as possible and isolate the variable, which in this case is the visible iron content of a certain brand of cereal. Document your results and get ready to share your discoveries at the science fair!
That’s just one idea, but you aren’t limited to that! Try coming up with different ideas of variables and give them a try. Remember, you can only change one thing at a time.
