Australia's Science Forum

Hi All

Does anyone have a recipe for making cells with jelly and lollies please?
I have to prepare for pracs tomorrow. I'm not sure on lolly types or quantities of jelly. I remember something like jaffa for nucleus and nerds floating about.

Any help appreciated
Rita

We use plasticine, what your suggesting is rolling lollies around bench tops that last had lead nitrate spills then the little darlings will eat them

This is how we make Jelly Cells - to get Jelly to set quickly if needed on same day I only use one cup of boiling water than use ice cold water to make up rest of water quantiy once Jelly dissolved. (Hope you understand what i mean)
Jelly Cell
Aim :
Students to be able to make their own plant cell, by identifying parts of a cell and adding them to the cell structure.

Materials:
A picture of a plant cell
A container to represent the cell wall (Zip lock glad bag)
Jelly pre – made needs to be a soft but not runny consistency to represent cytoplasm.
A selection of lollies to represent : Chloroplast (green sweet),
Nucleus a large patterned sweet,
mitochondria a soft patterned round sweet,
Ribosomes need to be a long type of sweet.
Vacuole a string liquorish joined together, so other parts don’t get in.

Get students to design their cell from the selection of sweets provided, naming and identifying the parts.
Then they need to wash their hands and they can start to assemble their cell.
Starting with the clip lock bag and two or three scoops of jelly, then their imagination can have a good time.
Once assembled it can be placed in the fridge over night to set and identified and eaten the next day as part of a cell party.


KIMMY

As a Prac one of my teachers does is they make pizzas. But they book out a home ec room for this and they have to arrange the toppings as the cell. To make it better the kids have to bring in the toppings so they have to do the thinking!
Trish

I have a stock of foam and plastic cups, spoons, plates etc for when we want to do anything in Science that the students can eat.
The students are told to NOT put anything on any benches or desks and to always use the plastic plates provided.
Sometimes we reschedule the classes into the Cooking rooms ...
The final decision on these issues is the teacher - I say if I think it is safe or not, but then it is not my decision.

Our Year 7s make their edible cell models at home as an assessment task and then bring them to school for marking. We get a fantastic array of cakes, pizzas, hollowed out fruits and jellies. They have to label the organelles. If the teacher can't mark the model within the day, they take a photo and mark it later. Kids come and collect their models and take them away to eat if they want to with their friends, they don't eat them in the labs!!

Just for fun really my kids made cells out of wax.
they used differnet wax colouring and when the wax cools enough to be handled can be shaped into anything your heart desires. You do have to work quickly but then we had dinner by cell candle light and watched all our hard work melt.
Don't think this would work on a class level but it was fun and they learnt something.
I'd just like to thank you all for your help this term, its been a fairly stressful one for me and reading these pages brightens my day. We finish today for the holidays so I hope you all have a great break. Enjoy the rest we all deserve.
Krysia

Hi All

Went well this morning and one more class this afternoon.
Plenty of newspaper on benches and dedicated food equipment. Teacher had choice of cups, plates or bags (lucky I had stocked up). Used cups as the cell wall.
The children were that excited!
Those students who followed instructions about using the jug of COLD water to help set the jelly had some great models.

So, THANK YOU for your methods and tips.
Rita

has anyone just made up a gelatine based jelly instead of jelly packets? would you bother flavouring it?

Never tried it but I'd imagine it would taste pretty bad even with all the lollies floating in it. I used to make jelly for my son when he was a little tacker using fruit juice and gelatine. Maybe you could try cordial or something like that if it works out cheaper.
Fill the kids up on sugar then send them off to Maths - brilliant!!

They shouldn't eat science experiments so use gelatine. Personally I hate the smell so I use jelly crystals, and whatever, split peas, pasta, no lollies etc.
I have all different pasta shapes dyed different colours for one cell prac and they glue them onto a bit of card. I think bits of wool for wiggly bits and pipe cleaners for the cell wall-yr 8.