Human Biology & Health STEM Activities for Kids (45 results)

Do You Love the Taste of Food? Find Out if You Are a Supertaster!

STEM Activity

2 reviews

Have you ever noticed that some people are a lot pickier about the food they eat than other people are? They might be more selective because they are supertasters! To supertasters, the flavors of foods are much stronger than to average tasters. Whether or not someone is a supertaster comes down to the taste buds on his or her tongue, and you can actually investigate a person's supertaster status by looking at this. Are you a supertaster? Find out with this tongue-based activity! Read more

How Sour or How Sweet is Your Lemonade?

STEM Activity

Cooking is a fun and rewarding activity, allowing you to be cook and a scientist at the same time, experimenting with endless taste combinations! The five tastes humans can experience are: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. But have you ever experienced some combinations that were delicious and others that were downright yucky? How do cooks come up with delicious recipes, and even more amazingly, how can they replicate the same exact flavors over and over again? Does science have anything to… Read more

How to Help Pass Gas

STEM Activity

1 review

Has your stomach ever ached so bad you felt as if it was blown up like a balloon—maybe after the big Thanksgiving meal? You may have had a large amount of gas trapped in your stomach and intestines. But where does the gas come from that makes you feel so uncomfortable, and how does it disappear again? In this activity, you will blow some bubbles to investigate how a specific medicine can help you feel better, so next time your tummy hurts because you are bloated, you will know how to cure… Read more

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Make String from Algae

STEM Activity

227 reviews

Did you know that the seaweed you've seen in the ocean or even eaten as a snack is inspiring innovators to imagine new materials? Large brown algae, like kelp, contains polymers—long chains of molecules—that are more environmentally friendly than the ones in most plastics. These natural polymers (alginates) could eventually be used to create sustainable everyday objects. Try your hand at using a bit of chemistry to turn biodegradable polymers from algae into your own custom… Read more

How Warm is Just Sweet Enough?

STEM Activity

3 reviews

Can you recall how a piece of warm apple pie or a cup of hot chocolate milk tastes when you let it cool? Maybe you even prefer to have these treats at room temperature. Why is this? Can flavor change even when you are not adding ingredients, cook or bake it? Try this activity and discover how temperature influences flavor! Read more

Pinocchio’s Arm: A Lie Detector Test

STEM Activity

9 reviews

Did you ever think of lying as an interesting social skill? Lying is actually tied to empathy, the ability to see things from another person’s perspective. Most humans begin to develop these skills around the age of three, when they begin to understand that what they know about the world might be different from what other people know about the world. Telling lies might be a skill, but lies can be bothersome. Sometimes, you really like to know how to tell a truth from a lie. Will the… Read more

Play a Memory Game with Your Nose!

STEM Activity

6 reviews

Take a deep breath: freshly baked cookies, smoke from a wood fire, or a bouquet of roses—your nose is an amazing smell detector! Your sense of smell can not only identify a huge variety of odors, but it is also incredibly sensitive. Think about how easily you can detect if someone in your neighborhood has a barbecue just by smelling hints of smoke from a faraway grill. But how good is your nose when it comes to differentiating individual smells? Do this activity to find out! … Read more

Put Your Peripheral Vision to the Test

STEM Activity

4 reviews

Did you know we use our side vision for many daily activities, like riding a bike, reading or playing basketball? Few people realize they are even using it. Our survival once depended on the quick response of our peripheral vision. A detailed picture, created by our central vision, is only useful in situations where time allows us to focus on the details. But our side vision can help us avoid dangers quickly. In this activity, you will find out how specialized our peripheral, or side vision, is. Read more

Scentsational Memories

STEM Activity

Did you know that approximately 2 million people in the United States have no sense of smell? Lack of smell is a disorder known as anosmia, and can be caused by damage to the nerves that transmit information from your nose to your brain. Our sense of smell serves an important purpose, we use it to distinguish between edible and inedible items in our lives, including fresh or rotten foods, and even particular toxins that have strong, unpleasant smells. In this activity you will test the scent… Read more

Sensing with Your Feet!

STEM Activity

3 reviews

How many objects do you think you are touching with your hands every day? A lot! Every time you touch something, your hands are able to feel how smooth, cold, warm, or rough the object is. In fact, your hands and fingers are so good at sensing details of shapes and surface textures that they are able to identify an object just by touching and without seeing it! You probably know that already because you have tried that before. Here is the challenge though: Do you think your feet can do the… Read more

Two Eyes, One In-depth Picture

STEM Activity

Is catching, juggling or heading a ball hard for you? If you ever tried threading a needle, did it end in frustration? Have you ever thought of blaming your eyes for this hardship? Two eyes that work together help you estimate how far a ball is, or where the thread is with respect to the needle. This “working together” of the eyes actually happens in the brain. The brain receives two images (one for each eye), processes them together with the other information received and… Read more

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