Science Projects for Eighth Grade: What Flavor Cheese Mice like Best

This lesson can be used when studying animal behaviors.

Teach:

Mice can be a real pests when they become intruders in to someone's home. They will eat a families food whether it is in a bag or not. Most people get out mousetraps and put cheese on the end? But is cheese what really attracts mice? If it is, what is the flavor of cheese that mice like best? Let students know that they are going to experiment to find out the answers to those questions.

Materials:

Five mice

American cheese

Cheddar cheese

Blue cheese

Cream cheese

Monterey jack cheese

Swiss cheese

Plastic place mat

Notebooks

Pencils

Procedure:

1. Find out if there is anyone in your school that keeps mice as pets that would allow you to borrow five for a day or two. If not, contact your local pet shop and discuss the issue with the shop. They may be willing to bring the mice over to the school and supervise the project.

2. Lay out a place mat and put a small piece of each of the cheeses on the mat. Make sure they are as spaced out as you can get them.

3. Have students develop a hypothesis that states which cheese will be favored amoung the mice if any of them at all. Ask them to record their hypothesis in their notebooks before you continue.

4. Allow the first mouse to come out of the cage. You only want to observe one mouse at a time to make sure it is not being influenced by the other mice. Record which cheese the mouse ate if any and in what order. For example, if the mouse ate three cheeses you might say the mouse at the cream cheese first, the american cheese second, and the swiss cheese third.

5. Repeat step four with the rest of the mice having them come out one at a time. Be careful to record all of your results.

6. You may want to repeat this project again the next day to see if the mice choose the same cheeses.

Review:

Discuss the results and make a chart on the board. Bar charts or pie charts show the information in a way that is easy to read. Have the students write down the conclusion in their notebooks and compare it to the hypothesis they made. Ask the students to share if they saw anything that surprised them.