Myers Fourth Graders Go Bananas for Digestion Experiment

Myers fourth graders in Christine Decker, Olivia Sanderson and Jazmin Hayes-Postell’s classrooms got messy last week with a hands-on digestion experiment. Materials for the experiment included a banana and crackers to represent food, orange juice for stomach acid, water for saliva, a Ziploc bag to represent the stomach, a metal tray to represent the body, stockings for the small intestine, plastic and paper cups, and scissors. The objective of the experiment was for students to understand that the human body needs to break down food in order to absorb the nutrients it needs.

To begin, students put the banana and crushed crackers in the ziploc bag to demonstrate chewing (mechanical digestion). Then they introduced stomach acid and saliva by adding their orange juice and water in small increments to the Ziploc bag (chemical digestion). They then mimicked the action of the stomach by squeezing the bag to mix the contents. 

Next, ​t​he students transferred the food into the small intestine using the plastic cup as a funnel. As they squeezed the food through the stocking, all the “nutrients” needed for growth and energy flowed into the metal tray. Anything left in the stocking represented what the body could not digest. When the “waste” solidified, students transferred it into the paper cup with a small hole at the bottom to represent the large intestine. They used the other paper cup to push the waste through the small hole, which mimicked the act of expelling waste.