"Sunburnt Sausages" Return to list of pracs

Aim: This activity is used to make demonstrate the effects of UV rays on sausages.

Equipment:

• sausages (5);
• glad wrap;
• suncream;
• sun glasses;
• "clothing" (cotton, T-shirt fabric);
• materials (coloured cellophane, aluminium foil, glad wrap etc).

Method:

Cover sausages with different materials (eg. glab wrap, aluminium foil, different coloured cellophane (particularly green, red and blue) etc or clothing) and leave one sausage plain as a "control" (one to compare all others against). Predict what will happen to sausages when placed in the sun and compare it to your own skin. Discussion of skin cancer, "slip, slop slap" can be good. Place sausages in the sun for a couple of hours. Place suncream on some parts of another sausage. Sunglasses on another. After this, get children to look closely and feel the sausages and compare it to their skin. How should we protect our own skin?

Background Knowledge:

"Sunsmart" information is good. The burning of the skin results from high energy UV rays most of which are filtered out by the ozone layer. For a time though the ozone layer above Australia was very thin and in fact it had a hole in it. With government policy of the last decade that ozone layer is now closed. Nevertheless, the damage UV rays can do to your skin in killing skin cells is quite high. The beautiful dark tan colour of our skin we get soon after sunbaking is so a large extent dead cells.