Since STEAM Saturday and National Smile Day are happening together today, we found the perfect activity to combine the best of both worlds: Design and run an experiment with your child to determine whether smiling is contagious!
This awesome experiment comes from Science Buddies, and is a super fun way to study the science of human behavior. Many behaviors seem to be contagious, meaning that once one person does it, others then tend to start doing it. The most common behavior most people think of is yawning – how many times have you seen one person yawn and then watched other people start yawning as well (or even yawning yourself)? What other behaviors might be contagious?
Before you start your experiment, read The Smile That Went Around The World, by Patrice Karsh, for some inspiration. Here’s a read aloud video:
Now it’s time to come up with a method of testing to determine whether smiling is contagious. First, think of ideas for what your experiment might look like. Science Buddies gives a couple of examples:
- You could walk through the park and count the number of people who smile at you, keeping track of whether those numbers change based on whether you smile at them first or not.
- You can see if your smile causes other people to smile at others by having someone walk behind you. You smile at people you pass, and then have your friend track how many people then smile at him/her after seeing you smile.
What ideas do you have for your smile contagion experiment? Once you have settled on your testing method, make sure you have a large enough “sample size.” The sample size in this case would be the number of people you check to see if they are smiling. Make sure that you are “testing” enough people so you can be fairly certain that your results are accurate.
As always, get as creative as you want, and above all, have lots of fun learning together!
We’ll see you right back here next Saturday for another STEAM Saturday activity! Scroll through the rest of our website to learn how Critchlow Adkins is Building Brighter Futures for the children and families we serve!
