 your results
Sent in by:
Tina and Natalia of Gaithersburg, MD
There's NOse accounting for taste! Or is there?
- small cups
- cotton swabs
- different foods with similar textures (the ZOOMers compared ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, sweet and sour sauce, and maple syrup.)
- pen and paper for charting
- Check with a grown-up before you get started to make sure it's okay to taste some different foods in your house.
- Ask a friend to help. One of you will be the taster and the other the tester, but you can switch at the end so both of you will get a chance to taste.
- Draw a chart for recording your results. Write the name of each food you are testing in separate rows along the left side. Draw two columns for each taster. Label each column with the taster's name and "unplugged" or "plugged."
- Make some predictions about which foods will be easier and harder to identify. Will it be easier or harder to taste the foods with your nose plugged or unplugged?
- Blindfold the taster or just have her close her eyes.
- The tester then puts a little bit of one food on the taster's tongue with a cotton swab.
- The taster tries to identify which food she's tasting as well as whether it is salty, bitter, sweet or sour.
- The tester records the taster's answers on the chart for each food she tastes.
- When the taster has tried all the foods blindfolded, have her taste them each again but with her nose plugged as well. (Make sure you have her taste the foods in a different order.)
- Once the taster has tried each food with her nose plugged, switch who tastes and who tests and go through it all again.
- When you've both had a chance to taste, compare your results.
Which way was more challenging, with just eyes closed or with nose plugged too? Were certain foods especially hard or easy to taste? Try it again with crunchy foods or liquids and be sure to send your results to ZOOM!
Are you hot on the scent of the sci scoop? Here's how this works: A lot of what we think is taste is actually smell. That's why, when your nose is plugged, you can't taste some of the foods. It's because you can't smell what you are tasting.
Kayla, age 15 of Mcconnelsville, OH wrote:
The person I tested got 2 out of 6 with their nose pluged and 0 out of 6 with it plugged
Jake, age 13 of Lancaster, KY wrote:
I only got two right. the mustered and ketchup
Haley, age 12 of Leipsic, OH wrote:
My friend doesn't have such a good sense of taste! Averytime, she thought it was something different! LOL
Isabella of West Des Moines, IA wrote:
We ued liquids: vanilla extract, cranberry juice, soy milk, tomato soup, and maple syrup. I got all of them except the vanilla & tomato soup. It tasted really weird.
Gabriela & Jasmine of London, ENG wrote:
we used ketchup, mustard, cherry filling, apple chutney, sweet and sour sauce, and strawberry yogurt. we could recognize all of them.
Caitlyn, age 12 of Wappinger Falls wrote:
my conclusion was that when your nose is plugged things taste way different then they normaly do
Shad, age 13 of Provo, UT wrote:
I really think that smell has a lot to do with taste.
Denise, age 12 of Chicago, IL wrote:
me and my friend did it for a science project and we did it with chocolate syrup and strawberry syrup !!!
Ebony, age 13 of Chicago, IL wrote:
My tongue begin to have a sweet taste which made it hard for me to taste the other products.
Marisha, age 12 of Nashville, TN wrote:
I really could tell the difference between them all except ketchup. THAT WAS HARD!
Courtney, age 10 of Clarksville, TN wrote:
I could only find my sweet and sour spots on my tong sweet in the back sour in front. It was weird is all of you like that my brother is much diffrent than I am I realy wonder why?
Madison, age 8 of Phoenix, AZ wrote:
I smelled vanila when eating apple and it tasted like vanila.
Linda & Shantay of E. Orange, NJ wrote:
I found out that when we saw the results the smell was better.
Alycyana, age 15 of Cleveland, OH wrote:
I found out that by smellin it you can guess wat it is but 9 times out of 10 you got to taste it.
Ciara & Crystal of Mesquite, TX wrote:
We kept getting the ketchup, mustard, and the bbq sauce mixed up but the syrup was easy.
Kamaya, age 14 of Chicago, IL wrote:
I tried mine with pops like 7up pepsi ornge and grape, I could taste them bu got confused when I smelled them it was fun though.
Lany, age 9 of Edgard, LA wrote:
Plugged and Unplugged I used my taste buds and it seems like I did better w/ my nose unplugged. I tasted peach baby food, pear baby food, apples, pears, Vanilla pudding, and banana pudding.
Alex, age 11 of Laie, HI wrote:
I found that I could taste the foods better if I could smell them.
Olivia, age 11 of Pleasant Grove, AL wrote:
I found out that it is easier to tell what condiment is in front of you by taste. But first you smell 4 condiments, and then taste them. And that will tell you that most of the time taste is better than smell.
Tianna, age 13 of Chicago, IL wrote:
I found out that the tasting worked better than the smelling. I didnt make them plug their nose, but it still worked!!!
Stevie, age 10 of Riverside, CA wrote:
I only did three things and I got all of them right, but I got the ones with my nose un-plugged. I got the answers much faster than when my nose was plugged.
Marasha, age 10 of Houston, TX wrote:
My results came out like francesco's, but I could taste the lemon taste on the tip of my tongue.
Carmen, age 13 of Sarcoxie, MO wrote:
My brother and I tolk the test and he got 3 out of 5 and I got 4 out of 5 with pluging our noes and with out pluging our noes we got them all right.
Natalie, age 10 of Metairie, LA wrote:
It's really hard to taste things without smelling them. I tried and it was hard!!!
Elin, age 10 of Beaverton, OR wrote:
I did this experiment with my friend chelsea and we used mustard, ketchup, maple syrup and ranch dressing. Chesea got them all when she didn't plug her nose but she only got ketchup and maple syrup on the last one.
Siobhan, age 10 of Brooklyn, NY wrote:
My gramps got 3 out of 10 taste and smelling question.
Aaron, age 13 of E. Saint Louis, IL wrote:
The taste beat the smell. I did my experiment for a science fair project I used honey, honey mustard, ketchup, Hot mustard, ranch, sweet n' sour sauce, Buffalo sauce, and Barbeque sauce.
Audrey, age 9 of Ogden, UT wrote:
We tried it with different flavors of soda, cola, lemon lime, orange, root beer, grape, red cream soda. I thought that tasting it without smelling would be easier but most people guessed it while smelling only instead of tasting. It was a fun science fair experiment.
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