Help Students Model the Steps of the Design Process by Making Hair Gel

In the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading student book, Jess Makes Hair Gel, students read an account of a boy who sets out to make his own hair gel. Through the book, students have an opportunity to see the design process in action, complete with obstacles, missteps, and successes that Jess encounters.

Students learn:

• there are important steps that scientists follow when they design something
• while each step is important, you don’t always need to follow the same exact steps, in the same exact order
• scientists often need to revise their plans as they go along, based on what they learn

In the book, Jess identifies the properties of a good hair gel and then tests different ingredients to see which have these properties.  While conducting tests on each ingredient, Jess realizes that he needs to expand the list of properties of good hair gel to include several more.  With this realization he is able to solve problems he encounters and end up with a great hair gel.

You can let your students design their own gels.  Ask which ingredients they’d like to investigate.  Take this opportunity to teach students to use the word substances. Explain that substance is a word scientists use for ingredient.  Possible ingredient choices could include: shampoo, shaving cream, egg whites, corn syrup, gelatin and a glue stick (remind students to check with parents to determine the safety of an ingredient).

Share the important steps for designing mixtures.

1. Decide on the properties you want your new mixture to have.

When I grow up, I want to be a Jelly Belly scientist!

Being a scientist is cool.  Being a JELLY BEAN scientist is super cool!  Ambrose Lee can attest to this.  Ambrose is a food scientist who brainstorms flavor recipes for gourmet jelly beans at Jelly Belly Candy Co.  His job is so cool it has been featured in Popular Science magazine. Check out the Jelly Belly web site to learn more about the variety of flavors including crazy ones like:

• Pencil Shavings
• Toothpaste
• Moldy Cheese
• Skunk Spray

Yuck!

The developers of the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading program were thrilled when Ambrose agreed to be featured in a student book called Jelly Bean Scientist.   In the book, readers meet Ambrose and his team of scientists who conduct tests with lab equipment and their own taste buds so the jelly bean flavors they design taste as