What even is yeast? I am thinking mainly of the kind we use to make bread rise. Which I buy from the grocery store…
But, back in the day, where did people find yeast? I assume people cultivate it and grow it, much like sour dough, but someone had to find it originally, right?
And what does ir do in the wild? Especially since it is so easy to kill? (Can’t be too hot, can’t touch salt, can’t be too old…)
Note: this is purely to do with my curiosity. I have no interest in actually hunting wild yeast
In: Biology
For a 5yr, i would read them Horton hears a who. Then i would get a packet of dry yeast and tell them each granule has as many individual yeasts as you have people in a whole town! Look with a magnifying glass.
Tell them microorganisms like yeasts are everywhere on earth, on your skin right now you have 1,000,000,000 microorganisms per sq cm. Its hard to imagine.
The harder part for a lot of people is the idea that these things can grow fast by multiplying. Both the multiplying and large number can be simulated by trying to make a million dots on a notebook. Tell them to start with 1, then 2,4,8. Tell them its kind of every hour you get this doubling. In yeasts it can be 1:100, but it takes longer (but that’s maybe too complicated). If you get to 100,000 that’s a lot. My kids school got together and did a million which went all along the wall in the hallway.
Finally explain that many microorganisms including yeast are good and necessary, like how they grow in your gut and help digest. Or how they keep dead things like trees from piling up to the sky. A few are mostly always bad maybe because they make things that irritate your body. And a few are around harmless but if you dont take care of them like by washing out a cut, or eating food that isnt stored properly, they will start to grow too much and we need medicine to get rid of them.
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