Tease Your Tongue

Can you taste the difference between a turnip and a carrot, or an apple and a potato? Think you can? Try this taste test with a friend.

You'll need:

• small, peeled cubes of raw apple, potato, carrot, turnip, and even onion (all cubes should be about the same size)
• a plate
• a blindfold
• a pen or pencil and paper

1. Spread the vegetable pieces on a plate.
2. Blindfold your friend so she can't tell what the vegetables are by sight and ask her to hold her nose.
3. Ask her to taste each vegetable cube one by one and guess what she's eaten. Write down what the cube really is and what she thinks it is.
4. Now it's your turn to take the taste test. At the end, compare your scores. Chances are both of you made a lot of wrong guesses.

What's happening?

Excerpt from The Jumbo Book of Science by the Ontario Science Centre, used by permission of Kids Can Press Ltd., Toronto.