
Cookie Mining and Environmental Cost
Easy
Can you remove chocolate chips from a cookie without destroying it? Real mining faces the same challenge. Digging up valuable resources often damages the land around them.
You get two cookies and a bent paper clip. For the first cookie, dig out as many chips as you can with no concern for damage. For the second, try to remove chips while keeping the cookie intact.
Count your chips and your cookie chunks. Each chip earns money, but each chunk of broken cookie costs you. Compare your profit from careful mining versus careless mining.
Hypothesis
The hypothesis is: Do miners earn more money if they protect the environment by mining carefully, or if they harm the environment by mining quickly?
Method & Materials
You will use two chocolate chip cookies and a bent paper clip to mine the chips out of the cookies. You will have two minutes to mine each cookie. You will count the number of chips you get out of the cookie and the number of cookie chunks (environmental damage).
You will need two chocolate chip cookies, one bent paper clip, a paper towel or newspaper, a timer, a lab worksheet, a pencil, and a calculator (optional).
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See what’s includedResults
After completing the experiment, it was found that miners can earn more money if they protect the environment by mining carefully. The observation that stood out was that mining quickly caused more environmental damage than mining carefully.
Why do this project?
This science project is interesting and unique because it teaches students about the importance of protecting the environment from mining damage.
Also Consider
Experiment variations to consider include mining with different types of cookies and using different tools to mine the chips.
Full project details
Additional information and source material for this project are available below.Related videos
These videos explain the science behind this project and demonstrate key concepts used in the experiment.
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