Will It Work - Iron for Breakfast

This is a great experiment to show if there really is iron...real iron...in our breakfast cereal. 

Here's what you'll need: warm water; a quart size plastic bag, cereal with iron in it ( Total cereal works well); a strong magnet (the neodymium magnet I used is available at stevespanglerscience.com ); if you want to get accurate, a measuring cup.

Here's what you do:  Put the cereal (at least a cup) into the quart size ziploc baggie and pour warm water to about the halfway point. Close the bag but leave an air bubble in there.  Then smoosh up the cereal flakes with your hands so that your mixture looks like a soupy mess.  Let it sit for about 20 minutes.  When the time is right, grab the mixture and place it on top of the magnet and slosh it around, over the magnet for 20 seconds or so.  This allows some of the iron bits to be attracted to the magnet.  Flip the whole thing over and you should see some black flecks of iron around the magnet.  Lift up the magnet and move it in circles to see even more collected. Yes that's real iron and you eat it when you eat your cereal.

Why It Works: Many breakfast cereals have iron in them because our bodies need a certain amount of it to keep us feeling good. If we don't have enough we could become tired (iron-poor tired blood sound familiar?), fatigued and have les resistance to disease.

My rating: It gets 4 out of fir beakers from me.  Great stuff.