Wednesday 12 June 2013

Science: Removing the iron from your cereal!

 
It's really easy.  All you need is to crush your cereal in a bowl, get a magnet and stir it around.  Pull it out and the iron in the cereal will be attracted to the magnet and the rest left in the bowl!


This experiment happened when my girls asked me the other day if eating iron could kill you.  I told them that our blood is iron rich and we need it to keep us healthy.  People who don't eat enough can become anaemic, which means they suffer with anaemia (A condition where the person has not produced enough red blood cells or haemoglobin in their blood, making the person suffer with weariness and their skin to pale.)  So I showed them proof that it was in their food which they found most amusing and learnt a bit of science in the process.

I did say that too much of anything wasn't a good thing and eating all my iron filings probably wasn't the best thing to do and they were content with that.

4 comments:

  1. My granddaughter tried the cornflakes experiment last week but it didn't work, we thought our magnet wasn't strong enough. I'll get her to try again dry like you did rather than wet like her book said.
    Thanks for sharing all your good ideas :)

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    1. You're very welcome I hope it all goes well for with the dry cereal :)

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  2. Just tried it and found the crumbs need to be really tiny, if that helps. Even then we found it hard to see many stuck on.

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    1. The reason you haven't got much on your magnet is because the percentage of iron compared to the rest of the ingredients in your cereal is not very much, but enough to see. It does help to look for a cereal that is high in iron as possible.

      I'm sorry you did not think that I made it clear that you have to crush the cereal finely, I thought the photo in the post made it clear. I will edit this post following your comment Angela, so it is made clearer. Many thanks :)

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