The Year 9 Psychology classes are learning brain anatomy to find out where our thoughts, emotions, personality and memories work. The carriers of all this information are neurons, and the neuron structure will stick in the mind much better if it's edible.
Last week the students learnt that the red lollies (dendrites) receive an action potential from an adjacent neuron, the DNA is in the fruit ring (soma) with the fruit pastille in the middle (nucleus). From there it travels down the strawberry yoghurt bar (axon) which is protected by a number of rainbow sour straps (myelin) and on through the Haribo spaghetti axon terminals, with their terminal buttons. Across the synapse is the dendrite of the next neuron, ready to receive the electrical action potential and pass it on.
Despite being Friday afternoon, the Year 9 students were fully focussed, and exercised unflinching discipline to refrain from eating their neurons until the end of the lesson. Hopefully they have internalised the anatomy facts as well as the lollies.
Photographs by Eve Schembri and Lilah Newbery (Year 9 Orange)
