Instructify

May 14, 2009

In their book Made to Stick, Dan and Chip Heath write about a stunning demonstration that showed the number of nukes in existence during the cold war. During this demonstrations, Geoff Ainscow of the group Beyond War asked audience members to close their eyes. He then dropped a BB into a metal bucket, representing the Hiroshima bomb. The BB made a loud clang as it hit. Following that, he dropped in 10 BBs — the nuclear firepower of a single Russian or American nuclear submarine. Then, to illustrate the arsenal of the entire world, he dropped in 5,000 (!) BBs, creating a cacophony of the little spheres smashing into the metal bucket (click here to read the excerpt, with an audio clip).

As this anecdote shows, sometimes a sensory demonstration works best to illustrate scale. The website Sugar Stacks has applied this tactic to eating habits. The front page shows various-sized servings of Coca-Cola. Next to each stands a pyramid made out of sugar cubes equal to the amount of sugar in each serving. Looking at the piles of sugar may make your students rethink that trip to the vending machine between classes. Sugar Stacks asks, “A label can tell you there are 39 grams of sugar in your soda, but what does that much sugar look like?” Frankly, it looks like a case of type 2 diabetes waiting to happen. Sugar Stacks doesn’t only pick on sodas. You can find out the horrifying amounts of sugar in snacks, cereals, and even fruit (the amount of sugar in fruit is really depressing — what are we supposed to eat? Drywall?).

While not as high-stakes as nuclear war, making informed eating decisions is important for your students to learn. Visualizing how much sugar is in their diet may mean fewer trips to the dentist and the doctor in the long run. -BILL FERRIS