Can You Taste It?

http://www.teachengineering.org/view_lesson.php?url=collection/duk_/lessons/duk_taste_mary_less/duk_taste_mary_less.xmllessontext/xmlCan You Taste It?Engineering K-Ph.D. Program, adaptationsmelltastenervous systemhypothesisolfactoryreceptor cells volatile

Few people are aware of how crucial the sense of smell is to identifying foods, or the adaptive value of being able to identify a food as being familiar and therefore safe to eat. In this lesson and activity, students conduct an experiment to determine whether or not the sense of smell is important to being able to recognize foods by taste. The teacher leads a discussion that allows students to explore why it might be adaptive for humans and other animals to be able to identify nutritious versus noxious foods. This is followed by a demonstration in which a volunteer tastes and identifies a familiar food, and then attempts to taste and identify a different familiar food while holding his or her nose and closing his or her eyes. Then, the class develops a hypothesis and a means to obtain quantitative results for an experiment to determine whether students can identify foods when the sense of smell has been eliminated.

Food engineers use information about how people sense taste to develop artificial flavors that taste more like the real flavors they are designed to mimic. 20TeachEngineering.orgMary R. Hebrank (Project and Lesson/Activity Consultant), Duke UniversityHebrank, M., 1995. “An Exercise in Good Taste”, in Biology On A Shoestring, National Association of Biology Teachers, Reston, VA.S100FC3DNorth_CarolinaMath4.01 Collect, organize, analyze, and display data (including line graphs and bar graphs to solve problems.44S101019DNorth_CarolinaMath4.04 Design experiments and list all possible outcomes and probabilities for an event.44S1002968North_CarolinaMath4.02 Compare and contrast different representations of the same data; discuss the effectiveness of each representation.55S1014376North_CarolinaMath4.01 Collect, organize, analyze, and display data (including box plots and histograms) to solve problems.77S10283D8North_CarolinaScience4.05 Determine that foods are made up of a variety of components 44S1028413North_CarolinaScience1.01 Identify and create questions and hypotheses that can be answered through scientific investigations.66S1028415North_CarolinaScience1.02 Develop appropriate experimental procedures for: • Student generated questions.66S102841ENorth_CarolinaScience1.05 Analyze evidence to: • Explain observations.66S1028421North_CarolinaScience1.06 Use mathematics to gather, organize, and present quantitative data resulting from scientific investigations: • Measurement.66S10284AFNorth_CarolinaScience1.01 Identify and create questions and hypotheses that can be answered through scientific investigations.77S10284B1North_CarolinaScience1.02 Develop appropriate experimental procedures for: • Student generated questions.77S10284BANorth_CarolinaScience1.05 Analyze evidence to: • Explain observations.77S10284BDNorth_CarolinaScience1.06 Use mathematics to gather, organize, and present quantitative data resulting from scientific investigations: • Measurement.77S10284F7North_CarolinaScience4.01 Analyze how human body systems interact to provide for the needs of the human organism: • Musculoskeletal.77United StatesCopyright 2012 - Engineering K-Ph.D. Program, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke Universityhttp://www.teachengineering.org/policy_ipp.phphttp://www.teachengineering.org/2008-09-264Teacher