Our Science Museum, COSI, that recently won best Science Museum award, often sends out a science experiment in the mail. The current exhibit is a CSI crime scene, which we are going to see tonight along with Waterfire. The companion experiment this month is Very Berry DNA.
What you need:
strawberries fresh or frozen
1/8 t salt
1 cup cold water
2 T liquid detergent
toothpick
1 T rubbing alcohol -chilled in the freezer
strainer
2 mason jars
What you do:
1. Place 1 large strawberry, 1/8 t of salt and 1 cup cold water in jar. Smash up strawberry. Shake for 3 minutes.
2. Pour the shaken mixture through a strainer into another mason jar
3. Add 2 T detergent and mix gently. Let solution stand 10 minutes.
4.Tilt the container. Slowly pour 1 T of chilled alcohol down the side so that it forms a layer on top of the strawberry solution. (Be careful not to mix the alcohol and the strawberry solution or the DNA extraction will not work)
5. Let the strawberry/alcohol solution sit for a few minutes. White stringy, filmy stuff that looks like cotton candy will begin to appear where the strawberry solution and alcohol meet. After 5 – 10 minutes, use a toothpick to collect the strands around the toothpick.
Ours weren’t quite big enough to pick out with a toothpick-but you can still see them.
Learn more here!
We did this with wheat at the Maryland Museum of Science and Industry a couple of years ago. It was so cool! Now, if only we could look at the DNA with a microscope. Am wondering if our Canadian OSU professor friend could facilitate this.
that looks pretty cool!
I miss the coal miners thing at COSI
The old COSI was so cool, the new one isn’t bad, but they should have kept the coal miners dangit!
I used to be a biology teacher and we did something like this with onions…this is much more fun!
That is amazing, I never would have thought you could see DNA without a microscope. Shows how much science I know! Which is why I’m always on the lookout for fun science activities for Jaylene, and I really appreciate your post. Thanks!
Wow, how awesome, thanks for sharing this!
The kids and I did this with our own DNA. We used our own spit! It worked great! I found the idea in “Explotatopia” a science book from the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
We did the same thing with peas. For our instructions, click here. Oh, by the way, I nominated you for a Brillante Blog award. Go to http://www.exploreacademy.blogspot.com and read the most recent post! Thanks for the great reads!