Testing for Life's Molecules

In this activity, learners conduct tests for proteins, glucose, and starch. At the beginning of the activity, learners choose three items to test: one known to be “never alive," one known to be “once was alive,” and one mystery item. In addition, each station includes a positive control. By the end of the experiment, learners should be familiar with some of the major organic molecules and should recognize that living things, and substances derived from them, are made of organic molecules. Use this activity to bring in topics surrounding nutrition, health, and digestion--since our bodies are made up of organic molecules, we need each of these molecules as nutrients in our food. [Activity is publicly available through a web crawler capture on Archive.org.]