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Magnetic Cereal! Extract Iron from Breakfast Cereal

July 18, 2018 by OneMommy

Kids love playing with magnets.  When we did our magnet exploration the kids kept coming back to it throughout the week.

You can impress your child with this simple experiment to extract iron from cereal.

No matter what your child’s age, this magnetic cereal experiment will get quite a reaction.

Magnetic Cereal Experiment: how to extract iron from cereal

Who says breakfast has to be boring?

A little kitchen science will give that first meal of the day a whole new meaning.

(Affiliate links have been used below. Find my full disclosure here.)

Magnetic Cereal Experiment

Materials Needed:

  • 1/2 cup of iron fortified cereal (We used Total.)
  • strong magnet (We found this one worked great.)
  • water
  • zippered sandwich bag
  • shallow dish

Pour a small amount of water into a shallow dish.  Float 2-3 pieces of Total cereal on the water.

Now is the perfect time to ask your kids what types of things are attracted to magnets.  Metal!

Ready to wow them?

Place your magnet close to one of the pieces of cereal and watch what happens.  The cereal will move across the water towards the magnet!

Total cereal experiment

Explain that the breakfast cereal is fortified with iron.  You might even want to look at the nutritional information on the side of the cereal box and point out where it mentions iron.

In today’s experiment you’re going to extract iron from cereal. 

The first step is to break the flakes up into tiny pieces.  Your child can do this with their fingers, or they may choose to use a rolling pin.

magnetic cereal experiment

Place the crushed up cereal in a small zippered plastic bag.

Fill the baggie 1/3 of the way with water and let the mixture sit for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes have your child shake the bag a little while holding a strong magnet against the side of the bag.

Total cereal experiment

The iron filings will collect against the magnet.

This is easiest to see if you lay the bag down on a flat surface and then slowly lift the magnet away from the bag.

You can even use the magnet to pull the dark iron pieces around the bag of cereal. 

extracting iron from cereal -- simple experiment to show kids their cereal has iron in it

Want to take the magnetic cereal experiment a little further?

Try it with several different cereals to see which one has the most iron in it.  Then check out the nutrition labels to see if you’re results match up.

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Filed Under: Science Tagged With: kitchen science

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  1. 100+ Science Experiments for Your Homeschool Science Class - Year Round Homeschooling says:
    September 24, 2018 at 5:03 am

    […] Magnetic Cereal […]

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