Geologic Sandwich Science Lab Activity

This is a classroom activity my wife taught me.  Her student teacher years ago taught her this.  It is a lab activity to teach the evolution or development of life on Earth over the last 4.6 billion years.  This lesson is fun but stinky.  (Some people don't like the smell of some of the ingredients.)

Geologic Sandwich Labsheet

Ingredients or Lab Equipment or Supplies Needed:
-paper plates
-butter knife
-mayonaise
-green food coloring
-loaf of brown wheat bread, although any sliced bread will do
-raisins
-oysters and or clams
-sardines
-celery sticks
-thin sliced pastrami
-chicken lunch meat
-Turkey lunch meat
-Turkey lunch meat
-onions (scallions)
-sliced cheese

Talk to the students about each organism as the organisms are placed on the bread.  Put a piece of bread between each of the organisms.

Start with green mayo on a slice of bread.  This represents the single celled organisms that were the first life on Earth...in the oceans actually.  There are 6 kingdoms of life.  They evolved as follows:  First were Kingdom: Archaebacteria about 3.5 Billion years ago....then there  Kingdom:  Eubacteria 2.5 billion years ago or so....  These bacteria kingdoms had single celled bacteria that do not have nuclei in theer cells.  then about 1.5 billion years ago the single celled protists.  Kingdom Protista are mostly
single celled but they DO have nuclei.  The slime or green mayo represents these forms of life.
On the worksheet or labsheet the students write the name of the Precambrian Era.

Next add a piece of bread and place raisins on it.  Raisins are the trilobites.  Trilobites were the first arthropods...that is, animals with an exoskeleton...like insects, spiders, crabs etc.  Trilobites were preceded by sponges and jellyfish, but we do not have anything in the lab to represent them.  On the labsheet write the name of the Paleozoic in the Era column and in the Periods column write Cambrian.

Add another piece of bread and place oysters on it.  This represents invertebrates like cephalopods or brachiopods.   Now wrtie the name Ordovician in the Periods column.

Add another piece of bread and place another oyster or a clam on it to represent more invertebrates.  Write the word Silurian in the Periods column.

more bread and add a couple of sardines...canned sardines.   These represent the age of fishes or the Devonian.  Write down Devonian in the Periods column.

More bread and add a few pieces of celery to represent non-flowering plants.  You could be more accurate and add pine nuts instead, but i am severely allergic to pine nuts so I don't use them.  You could explain that the celery looks like a cycad trunk.  Also explain that in Europe they use the term Carboniferous for the two periods that we call the Mississippian / Pennsylvanian.  Write those down in the blank in the Periods column. 

Another piece of bread and a piece of salami.  This represents the first amphibians and reptiles of the Permian Period...so write down Permian in the Periods column.

Now we are in the Mesozoic Era.  This is the age of Dinosaurs.  Write down the word Paleozoic in the Era column.  Add on the next piece of bread a piece of chicken lunch meat.  Write Triassic in the Periods Column.

Now another piece of bread and add a piece of turkey lunch meat and write down Jurassic in the Periods column.

Place more bread on the sandwich you are working on and add a piece of lunch meat turkey.  Last period of the Mesozoic Era is Cretaeous so write it down.

Now we are in the Cenozoic Era so write it in the Era column.  Now add more bread and place an onion to represent the explosion of flowering plants.  Write the Period... Tertiary.

Lastly more bread and a piece of cheese to represent the age of mammals.  Now write down Quaternary in the periods column.

Now explain that the rock layers often get vey compressed so squash the sandwich and then explain that rock layers break, so cut the sandwich.  You can now use the sandwich halves to explain strike slip faults like the San Andreas Fault in California.  (Slide the halves horizontally along the cut.)   A normal fault would be like the mountain/valley faults seen in Utah and Nevada.  (Slide the halves up and down)  Thrust faults are like where India crashed into Asia to create the Himalayan Mountains.  (Push halves together.) 

Recommendation:  Don't try and eat it,

Remember that eras are divided up into periods.  Older eras and periods are on the bottom and younger ones are on top.   This is the law of superposition..

Review of Eras and Periods for worksheet;

    ERA                                       PERIOD
Cenozoic                           Quaternary
                                          Tertiary

                                        Cretaceous
Mesozoic                         Jurassic
                                        Triassic
   
                                        Permian
                                        Mississippian/Pennsylvanian  (Carboniferous in Europe)
Paleozoic                         Devonian
                                         Silurian
                                        Ordovician
                                         Cambrian