Our kitchen smelled of blood and alcohol today. Gross, I know. What a way to start a post. See, about 6 weeks ago, we bought two chickens. Whole, but clean. One chicken we buttered and baked, roasting to golden perfection, eating it for dinner for two glorious nights. The other...
We MUMMIFIED.
Yes, you read that right. We mummified our chicken. See, we've been studying ancient Eqypt, and I just didn't feel that the children grasped the time and effort that went into making a living thing NOT decompose. So, we bought the chicken, mixed together salt, baking powder, and baking soda. This composition mimics the acidic and drying salts the Egyptians used to pull moisture out of the human body. It took many months (about six) to completely dehydrate the human body this way. The chicken took six weeks.
Sitting in salt, at three weeks. You have to change the salt mixture every week (every day at first) as it pulls the moisture from the chicken. Sorry, there's not a weekly update.
Dumping out the bag with chicken and salt in it.
A close up of the chicken. You can see the skin has become stiff and yellowed. The muscles underneath are firm and red. Like jerky, but not as appealing since it's also been rubbed in isopropyl alcohol to kill some bacteria. The Egyptians used fine wines for their kings, but see, I'd rather spend less on my chicken friend here. He isn't a pharaoh that I know of. In fact, He is probably a She. I should probably mention we didn't go all the way and wrap this chicken in linen. Why? I didn't want to. Simple as that. Plus, the real science behind the project is watching the salt do its work. Oh, and people kept asking me what I'd do with it after all that work...I threw it away! Sometimes the process is more important than the end result--kind of like life in general. Now that I'm starting to wax philosophical, I'll bit you adieu.
5 comments:
Very cool! Yet another reason why homeschooling is awesome!
That is a really cool experiment!! You are quite the inspiration! I need to find some simple experiments to try with Sawyer around the house.
Good job! We had some friends here who did the same thing for their Egypt unit. They did wrap theirs in linen and got similar results to yours. Looks like a fun project.
What an interesting project. I'm sure the kids really got it after that hands on experience. Where did you get this idea?
We had a blast. Here is the activity book we got the idea from, it has many activities that have been so fun, but I don't blog about school as much as I should!
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/the-story-of-the-world-curriculumactivity-guide-i/
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