Make learning fun at home with this colorful potato experiment!
Before you start, you will need three potatoes, hand soap, three plastic bags large enough to put one potato in each.
The Experiment Procedure
One potato will be the control. Wash your hands and the potato, then peel the potato and put it in a plastic zip lock bag without letting it touch anything else. Label this bag number one.
The second potato is the germy potato. Send your children outside to play for several minutes (teachers would optimally do this potato after recess, to give you an example). When they come in, have the second potato washed and peeled, then have each child handle it before putting it in the second zip lock bag. Label this bag number two.
Then have your children wash their hands with soap and water for 30 seconds (sing the ABC’s to make sure they wash long enough). Once they have thoroughly cleaned their hands, wash and peel the third potato and have them handle it before putting it in the third plastic zip lock bag. Label this bag number 3.
Now hypothesize: what will happen to the first potato? The second potato? The third potato? You can have your children draw and/or write daily observations about changes in the potatoes over the course of one week.
After a week, look at your potatoes and compare the results to your hypothesis: did what you think would happen actually occur?
The Explanation
What should happen is this: the control potato should look relatively clean and unchanged. This is because it was not exposed to many germs.
The second potato is the germy potato and should have grown multicolored patches and look rather gross. This change is from the germs that the children had on their hands when they touched it. This shows the transfer of germs from one object to another on contact.
The third potato should hopefully look similar to the control potato. The germs should have been washed off the children’s hands before they touched the potato.
If something seems to go wrong with your experiment, allow your children to think through the process and see if they can figure out what is going on. For example, in one classroom, the third potato was dropped on the floor half way around the room. The teacher allowed the experiment to continue without changing anything, and in the end, the third potato, supposed to be clean, was actually more colorful and germy than the second “germy” potato. The students decided on their own that this was the direct result of the potato contacting the floor, which was obviously dirtier than their hands had been after recess.
Having fun with science at home is a great way to teach your children and allow them to learn to love learning. If you enjoyed this potato experiment, you may be interested in more science lessons that can be taught at home.
