Things you need:

• Food coloring
• Q-tip
• Wax paper hole punch cut-outs, or reinforcement rings
• Magnifying glass
• Mirror

The Experiment:

With the Q-tip, swap some food coloring onto the tip of your tongue. Place the wax paper dot or reinforcement ring onto the colored section of your tongue. Then count the pink dots that show through the wax paper, or the ones inside the reinforcement ring.

So that’s how it works…

The pink dots are your fungiform papillae and they don’t take on the food coloring. These papillae house your taste buds. The more papillae you have, the more taste buds you have and more sensitive to taste you are. A non-taster would usually have less than 15 papillae in that circle, but a supertaster would have OVER 30! Are you a supertaster?

Some research fun…

• Who has more taste buds, in general, females or males? Children or adults?
• What happens when you hold your nose and taste something?

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