We looked forward to the first science experiment of the year because it called for a large bag of m&m's, my favorite candy. John is studying Apologia's
Land Creatures of the Sixth Day.
The Notebooking Journal is a fantastic addition to this book and that is where he recorded his results.
The idea was to separate the colors of m&m's and to count them out.Whichever had the smallest number would determine which number to be used in the experiment.
Then, three colors of construction paper were gathered, seven sheets of each color, cut into 6 pieces each.
They were put into a hamper with the sides blocked. All six colors of m&m's were poured into the hamper.
The author of this text is a "Creationist". He strongly disbelieves in the theory of evolution.He states that no matter how many millions of years one pretends to count up, a lion will NEVER turn into an elephant. He believes that God made KINDS of animals- dogs, cats etc..(as it says in Genesis). There HAVE been modifications to the characteristics of those animals all within their own kind. Dogs are still dogs no matter how big.....He is a strong believer in the process of Natural Selection, that is, that animals that have characteristics that lend well to survival in their environments will naturally do well and live to reproduce which perpetuates those specific characteristics.
The idea (and hypothesis) for this experiment was that m&m's whose colors match the three colors of construction paper would be harder to find because they are camouflaged and will elude capture.On the contrary, the m&m's that don't match, like the red, blue and brown ones would be very easy to spot and find in this hamper environment.The kids had to find them in a 2 minute period and count them after sorting by color. In the end, their results were skewed because they wound up with more m&m's in the basket than they had put in! Their conclusion was that a certain young student wearing purple added additional m&m's to the basket! John wrote this up in his notebook and we all enjoyed a candy treat!
