Citrus Experiments

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By: Tamra Thacker

My third category for Fast Family Time is one of my family’s favorite things to do: run experiments.

While “experiments” can sound a little intimidating, these are designed to be simple, fun, and fast. Some of them will take some prep (mostly buying the ingredients), but I think you’ll find the pay off will be worth it!

My husband is a trained scientist, so we’re always encouraging science learning in our house. Our kids think this is fantastic, because they get to ask their own questions and design their own experiments. And that’s the basic idea of experiments. When you find your kids asking questions about our world, encourage them to come up with their own answers, and then help them test it out! It’s a fun process for the whole family.

Experiment #1: Citrus Fun

I wanted to present two different citrus ideas, one pretty simple, and the other a little more complicated. Feel free to tweak these however you need to suit your own family’s needs!

Basic:

Do All Citrus Fruits Taste the Same?

This is a question our children asked one day. Instead of saying, “Of course not,” we said, “What do you think?” Then we decided to run an experiment. We took them to the store and let them pick out four different citrus fruits: an orange, a lime, a lemon and a grapefruit.

At dinner time we took out the fruits and started our experiment. My husband wrote down the question (“Do all citrus fruits taste the same?”) followed by each of the children’s individual “hypotheses” or guesses. Then, without cutting the fruits open, the children compared and contrasted them. What color is the peel? How are all the peels the same or different? How do they smell? What about the shape of the fruits? Then we cut open the fruits and the kids noted the shapes of the segments, as well as the smell of each fruit. We gave each one of them a small piece of each of the fruits, and finally they tasted them. We wrote down their observations, and they were able to tell for themselves if all citrus fruits tasted the same. The answer to this pretty basic question was interesting to the kids, and even to us as adults: even though they all taste different, they all have a similar type of taste—that’s why they’re a citrus fruit! All in all, it took a little over a dollar and about 5 minutes to run this very simple experiment.

A Little More Complicated:

Homemade Lemon-Lime Soda Pop

My daughter asked me how they make lemon-lime soda pop. I told her the truth: I don’t know. “Well,” she continued, “How do you think they make it?” We were then on a long car trip and I couldn’t say, “Well, let’s look it up,” so I said, “Why don’t we run an experiment when we get home?” She was thrilled by that. I had her make a list of what she thought might be in it: lemons limes sugar water (I made her add this one. She wasn’t sure I was right.) When my husband talked to her a little later, he told her that there was such a thing as carbonated water, and that would give it bubbles, just like soda pop. She scratched out water on the list and replaced it with “carbonated water.” So I went to the store and bought the needed ingredients. We already had sugar at home, so I bought a few lemons, limes, and some carbonated water (club soda or mineral water, whichever you’d prefer—I personally like club soda a little better). There happened to be some lemon-lime flavored sparkling water, so I bought that, thinking it would help our cause.

When I got it all home, we got out a pitcher and the kids had a great time squeezing the lemons and limes to get the juice out. Then they added the carbonated water to the pitcher and added sugar to taste. The first thing they noted was that our bubbles went away very fast. Not at all like real soda pop. My husband had them thinking about how we could make it better next time (maybe add the carbonated soda last, so they wouldn’t have to stir it as much), and how it might be done differently at a factory. But the next and best thing they noticed was that our version of lemon-lime soda pop was better than what you’d buy at the store!

They were so proud of the soda pop they made that they took it around for all the neighbors to try. This experiment took a little more money ($5 - $10), and a little more time, but it also produced a tasty beverage, and some very proud children.