The Goldilocks Lab

The three types of Kool-Aid that students got to drink to demonstrate the levels of Saturation! 

Science can either be terribly boring or very exciting. Especially topics including but not limited to...Elements, particles, phases of matter, solutions, solvents, solutes, and saturation. Now let’s take latter, Solutions and Saturations. To make this concept both interesting, relevant, and memorable, I developed the...wait for it, wait for it…

THE GOLDILOCKS LAB!

This lab is working with students to identify the solute and solvent of a solution. The Goldilocks portion comes in when I made three types of Kool-Aid, Purple with very little flavoring (but it looked exactly like regular Kool-Aid), Red Kool Aid (that was made according to the flavor ratio on the package), and Yellow Kool-Aid (made normally but then I added a few extra cups of sugar). This was to give students a chance to ‘taste’ the difference between: Undersaturated, Saturated, and Over-saturated. I made a lab sheet that students were required to fill out with a group of three people. When they had completed their portion of the lab and showed it to me, each member of the group chose one of the three flavors of Kool-Aid. After tasting it, they discussed with their group what ratio of saturation their Kool-Aid was. Was their Kool-Aid, too sweet, just right sweet, or not sweet enough?! 

The kids LOVED this lab! The were all focused, (especially because they had Kool-Aid as goal), working well together, and securely grasping the concept of Solutions and Saturations! I love this lab and am excited to do it next year!