My school holds its science fair every year in March. Two of the kids in my organic chem class are doing a study on the effects of zinc on earthworms. (The motivation for the project is that one of the kids recently lost her grandmother to Alzheimer’s disease. Zinc is one of the suspected factors for patients with the disease. They chose worms, at the suggestion of the department head/anatomy & physiology teacher because worms are easy to study, eat a lot (their entire body weight in a day), and have a (rudimentary) central nervous system.)
When the worms arrived, one of the students ran off to the department head’s office to get them and brought the box back to class. As we opened the box to look, most of the kids were fascinated by the worms and gathered around to look. Only four kids in the class were seriously grossed-out by the worms, two of whom happen to be the kids doing the project!
