#2212. Tootsie Roll Pop Experiment

Mathematics, level: all
Posted Sun Apr 15 20:36:00 PDT 2001 by Grace Parrish (g_parrish@hotmail.com).
Pine Ridge High School/ESE Dept, Deltona, FL
Materials Required: Tootsie Roll pops, chalkboard, paper, pencil
Activity Time: varies
Concepts Taught: Mean, Median, Mode, Estimation

In this activity, students get to find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Lollipop. A teacher I worked with in my internship gave me this Idea.

1. Each student gets their own lollipop. They then count to see how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center. Tallying is usually a good way to do it, or they can get other students to count for them. Usually the way I judge this is to tell them that there can be no candy shell left on the lollipop.
2. Each student puts how many licks it took them to get to the center up on the chalkboard. If we are working on rounding, I may have them round to the nearest hundred.
3. As a class, we find out the mean, median, and mode of the data.