How to Hatch Mealworms With an Electromagnet

Create two electromagnets by wrapping thin plastic-coated copper wire purchased at a local hardware store around a nail or bolt, and then attaching one end of each wire to the positive and negative poles of a battery. The magnet's power depends on the number of times you wrap the wire and the strength of your battery. Make one electromagnet using a AAA battery. Make a stronger electromagnet by using a AA battery and by turning the wire more times around the nail or bolt. Purchase an electromagnetic field-monitoring device from an industrial website if you wish to calibrate your own experiment.

Purchase equally aged mealworms at your local pet store. Mealworms are larvae that hatch into Tenebrio molitor beetles.

Punch holes, using a nail, in the lids of two plastic containers of the same size, such as empty whipped-topping containers. Put equal amounts of larvae and substrate in each container to make sure that the conditions are the same in each container.

Place your newly created electromagnets of different strengths under the separate containers of mealworms. Test the effects of your electromagnets on the developing mealworms by counting the days to hatching. The final result is fairly easy to see and quantitate -- simply count the number of larvae versus the number of beetles. See which container of mealworms hatches soonest!

Vary your experiment by creating a separate group of mealworms for which you switch the poles of the magnets at set times throughout your experiment. Some researchers have found that this "pole-switching" may slow down the growth of the mealworms.