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Back in grade school, the Science Fair was a big deal at our school. Finding the perfect combination of a partner, experiment, and construction paper that would yield a blue ribbon in the competition and bragging rights was the highlight of our year.
My very first blue ribbon came from an experiment about the connection between taste and smell:

Hypothesis: When the sense of smell is restricted, the sense of taste is greatly

diminished and different foods become hard to distinguish

Materials: 1. Assorted foods that have very distinct flavors (If I can remember
correctly, I used apples, oatmeal, pears and celery.
2. Willing taste testers
3. Blind folds for these taste testers
4. Clothespins for clamping noses
Procedure:
1. First blind fold and clamp the nose of the taste tester that you are evaluating.
2. Give them a sample of the food and ask them to identify it.
3. Record results

Conclusion:
After testing a few dozen people I found that there was a general decrease in the recognition of food when the nose was clamped. I later researched and learned about the connection between our nasal passages and our mouth that causes this phenomenon. But in 4th grade, I was light years ahead of my classmates who were still fascinated with volcanoes and paper towel absorbency experiments.

Learn more about this author, Tamara Sinclair.
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