Instructors use food to teach science at summer camp

A mouth-watering hamburger, accompanied by a side of fries, looks far less appetizing once it's been run through a blender.

The resulting pinkish paste, left to sit for a few hours, is topped by an inch of yellow fat that's floated to the top of the blender.

It's a vivid lesson of what the inside of your stomach looks like after eating such a meal. The unappetizing paste was a shocking sight for 29 children gathered inside a classroom at Nunavut Arctic College's Nunatta campus in Iqaluit, on Friday, July 29, at the end of a week-long science camp.

"It's pretty disgusting," says Sam Illupalik, 12.

"I was actually surprised. I knew there'd be a lot of fat, but not that much," says Mary Anne Stokes, 12.

The four science instructors here understand that if you want children to listen, it helps to speak to their bellies. Much of the science lessons involve food.

A lesson in chemistry and physics takes the form of making ice cream: kids are given zip-lock bags of milk, vanilla and sugar, which are dropped in larger bags full of ice and salt.

Salt lowers the freezing point of ice. Adding it makes the ice colder, and allows the milk mixture inside to freeze.

Kids jiggle the bags for five minutes, allowing the ice cream to mix. Meanwhile, David Nearing, 10, seems more interested in licking the salt water leaking from his bag than getting the ice cream inside.

Another popular lesson involves blood, or a facsimile of the stuff, with corn syrup mixed with cocoa powder and red food dye passing for red blood cells, and marshmallows standing in for white blood cells.

Again, it was the favourite of Liam Lloyd, 10, because "we got to eat it."

Oddly enough, the one experiment kids are advised not to eat is home-made toothpaste. The stuff contains borax, a detergent that's mildly toxic, so it's only used to clean eggs stained with coffee.

Throughout the week, camp attendees were offered crash courses in architecture, biology, using GPS devices, and even spacesuit design.

The camp is organized by a non-profit group called Actua. Similar camps will be held in Igloolik, Rankin Inlet, Gjoa Haven and Kimmirut by summer's end.