Does Fruit Have Feelings?

This post is a continuation of our previous water and rice experiments.  The experiment is completely a product of child wonder and curiosity.  After we spoke to rice for 30 days and saw the changes, the students wanted to try fruit, and they voted on blueberries.  So that everyone was a part of the experiment, I put the blueberries in a baggy and put that baggy inside of a Wal-Mart sack to prevent leakage.  Then I passed the bag around so that all of the students could have a turn squashing the berries inside the bag.  Next, I put about a half of a cup of squished berries in three different clean jars and sealed them.  With masking tape, one jar was labeled “LOVE” and the other jar was labeled “HATE”.  A third jar was left blank as our control group.  The children made predictions about what they thought would happen to each jar.  Every day without prompting as the students would leave class, they would say, “I love you” to the love jar and “I hate you” to the hate jar.  The blank jar sat by itself without being spoken to.

After 30 school days of speaking to the jars, we opened them…duh…dum…

So what do you think happened?  Now, if you have been following the other two experiments, you may have an idea of what happened.  The love and hate jars smelled distinctly different.  The love jar smelled like sweet wine.  The hate jar smelled more like vinegar.  Of course, all of the jars had started a fermentation process.  In fact, the jars had fermented so much that when I opened the lid it was pressurized to some degree and  hard to open.  There was actually a blue-grayish fog that came out of the love and hate jars when they were opened.  The jar that had no name didn’t have a fog and neither was the smell very strong like the love and hate jars.

What explains all of this?  Now, I can’t explain it, but there is something powerful about words and your students will figure this out after doing any of these experiments.  This could lead to such a powerful discussion about talking to others in a kind way.

What do you think we did next?  Well, I had one student who wanted to know what would happen if we started saying “I love you” to the hate jar and “I hate you” to the love jar.  We did this for 30 school days with the same jars and same berries.  We relabeled the jars with “hate” tape over the “love” tape and “love” tape over the “hate” tape.

(suspense building music plays here)…We opened the jars again after 30 school days of talking to the jars.  I predicted that the jars would change and the love jar would turn the hate berries into smelling sweeter and the hate jar would turn the love berries into smelling more sour…BUT this isn’t what happened.  The jars actually smelled the same.

What should we try next?