michael west wrote:
mmmm lol the schools version ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/School_science/Screaming_jelly_babies) is like for like. I definately don't remember scince or school open days being fun. All I seem to recall about high school science was cutting up small animals (I think this was part of my "sex education"), looking at the skin cells of a fellow class mate down an ancient microscope and learning something about litmus tests.
British school boy science in the 1980s was obviously taught by a sadly moronic bunch of educators - the fact that a candy that looks like a human baby screams as it bursts into flames (however demonstrative of energy) simply reminds me why I dropped science at 14. Thank God for the Arts ;-)
I could see cutting up small animals as a part of sex education if the focus were on detailed examination of the sexual organs of mice. This experiment would be sure to attract the attention of teen boys; the teen girls in the class would be more surreptitious in their eagerness to view the experiment. That helps to bring science down from the level of the head to the body level with which many teens often think.
Screaming jelly-babies may not be the most instructive of experiments, but the dramatic effects are bound to pique the interests of teen boys, and that's all you can hope for at that stage. Many a career in science was founded on making things explode to an extent that is no longer possible ion today's bowdlerized chemistry sets. It helps to separate the truly inquisitive from those who want to run away to the arts.
Ec