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Sweet Potato Experiments for Children

A sweet potato is a good source of carbohydrates for children, similar to regular potatoes, but sweeter. However, apart from just eating sweet potatoes, you can use them for some interesting and educational children̵7;s experiments. Projects are diverse, such as producing electricity and cultivating more sweet potatoes; you can use an ordinary sweet potato to educate your children about basic physics, chemistry and biology.

Make a Battery
- To make a sweet potato battery with your kids, insert a 3-inch zinc and a 3-inch copper nail into a sweet potato, about 1-inch apart. Do not let the nails touch. Cut a couple of 6-inch strips of thin copper wire and wrap the ends of the wire strips around the top of each nail. Put the opposite ends of the wire strips onto the terminals of a small flashlight bulb and watch the children̵7;s faces as the bulb illuminates.
How the Sweet Potato Battery Works
- Sweet potatoes contain sugar, water and starch. The nails act as electrodes; one is positive, while the other is negative, similar to the terminals on a regular battery. The different metals react with the chemical composition of the potato, and electrons flow between the two nails. When a bulb is connected, an electrical circuit is made, and the electrons flow to the bulb and illuminate it. The bulb won̵7;t glow very brightly, or for long, but the children learn about electricity and how it's made by completion of the experiment.
Sprouting Sweet Potato
- By sprouting a sweet potato, your child can grow a sweet potato plant indoors that he can then plant outside to grow more sweet potatoes. Hold a sweet potato lengthwise, as sweet potatoes are generally tubular in shape. Push about six cocktail sticks or toothpicks into the sweet potato about one-third of the way from the top end. Space them apart evenly so about an inch or so of each cocktail stick protrudes from the potato. Put the potato into a glass and rest the protruding cocktail sticks on the edge of the glass. Fill the glass half full with warm water and put the potato somewhere sunny and warm. Have the children to check each day. Roots form in a couple of days and then the potato shoots from the top; leaves form after a week or so. Change the water every three days.
Planting
- Let the roots and the new plant grow until it̵7;s too big for the glass; then carefully remove the plant from the glass and remove the cocktail sticks. Fill a pot 3/4 full of compost. Make a hole in the soil and then place the sweet potato plant into the hole so the potato is in the hole, but with the shoots and leaves are exposed. Put a little more compost on top and push down firmly to bed it in place. Put the plant in a sunny place and water regularly. In a few months, dig up the plant, and you will find that new sweet potatoes have grown.

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