Iron from breakfast cereal

Here is an unbelievably easy experiment that you can do with some iron-fortified cereal and a strong magnet. I got the idea from Steve Spangler Science.

Materials:

• iron-fortified cereal (about 2-3 cups)
• strong magnet (even a fridge magnet will work if it’s strong enough)
• plastic ziptop quart size freezer bag (freezer bags are stronger) or larger
• water

Method:

Step 1:

Gather your supplies (we used a variety of magnets as I wasn’t sure what was going to work)

Step 2:

Pour some of your iron-fortified cereal into a baggie. Yes, *some* is a scientific term, in this case, it probably equates to about 2 cups give or take (about half a quart sized freezer storage bag). You can use more but you need a larger bag. You can crush the flakes a bit to make them smaller.

Step 3:

Add some water, almost to the top of the bag, but not too much because you want to leave room to seal the bag. Let sit for 15 minutes for the cereal to get mushy and dissolve.

Step 4:

Take your magnet in your hand and place the bag on top of the magnet in your hand and rock it back and forth (or side to side, I’m not picky) for a while.

Step 5:

Carefully flip the bag and the magnet over, and observe:

The iron will not dissolve in water and you can collect the iron with the magnet. That black “dust” to the right of the magnet (and my husband’s fingers) is the iron collected from the cereal. Yummy!

To print out or download a copy of this experiment, click print or download on the image below

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How cool is that?