How to Teach Science During Dinner… With Pizza!
Oh yes. Pizza. What more can be said? Most of us have tried many different kinds of pizza and have found at least one favorite for the dinner (or breakfast) table.
So this week, let’s pull a little information from my Classic Science Chemistry book and dig into a little of the science behind this tasty item. Rather than focus on the science of MAKING a pizza, let’s look more at the science of EATING our pizza. First of all, let’s review some of the basic concepts we will be looking at from our previous series on the Science of Breakfast:
As you already know, pizza (like everything else in the universe) is made up of atoms. And atoms usually do not just hang around by themselves. They stick together with each other to form a larger group called a molecule. Pizza is filled with billions of molecules!
This fact is both good and bad for us. You see, our bodies need many of the atoms within these molecules to live. That’s right! We use these atoms to help us move, breathe, walk, talk…
But there is a HUGE problem! These atoms are stuck together in such LARGE molecules that our bodies cannot use them. Another way to say this is the density of our pizza is too large. There are too many atoms stuck together in that piece of pizza for our bodies to be able to use them. We need to move them away from each other!
But how?
This is where our digestive system comes in!
First, let’s imagine you are eating your favorite kind of pizza. Once that pizza gets in your mouth your teeth get to work. They grind your pizza into smaller and smaller pieces. By doing this, your teeth start to break down a lot of the large molecules into smaller molecules!
This means your teeth help to diffuse the molecules within the pizza away from each other! This makes your slice of pizza less dense.
But the molecules that make up your pizza still need to break apart even more! This is when your body starts to attack your food with chemicals called enzymes (“en-zimes”). Enzymes are chemicals made by your body to do all kinds of cool things. Some enzymes are made to help break down the large molecules in your food!
Now if you want to get REALLY gross, you can open your mouth and look at all of that mushed up goodness that was once your pizza. (Please don’t do that at the dinner table…)
You might be thinking with all of that grinding and tearing from your teeth AND the chemical warfare you are waging against that squished up goo swimming in your mouth that SOME of the atoms within that pizza HAVE to be destroyed, right?
WRONG!
The Law of Conservation states that atoms cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. That means all those atoms within your pizza are still hanging around inside your body (unless, of course, you left a few crumbs on your cheek.)
Imagine a slice of pizza built out of building blocks. You could easily take apart that artistic masterpiece with a little effort, right? Of course you could. Well THAT is what you are doing your pizza with your mouth! You’re not destroying anything at all, just rearranging the pieces.
I’m not done yet! We’ve got a lot of science to look at during dinner. Stay tuned!
Find out more about scientific concepts for your family within the Classic Science Curriculum
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