The humanities students stood around teacher David Townsend as they were debriefed on what “experiments” they would be performing on the packaged pastries. They listed out that they would test weathering on the Twinkie, gravitational pull, solubility, thermal conductivity and more.
“Twinkie Day is part of the science unit here in Humanities class, although it’s not really science,” Townsend said. “We simply subject the Twinkies to various experiments and the students draw conclusions about them compared to the control Twinkie.”
The students travelled to the stadium to perform their first experiment. A selected student was then told to go to the top of the stands and drop the Twinkie when ready. With an abrupt thud the pastry landed on the ground and the group of students huddled around it to examine the damage. A student did eat the dropped Twinkie.
“The experiments were pretty entertaining and gross at the same time,” senior Alexis Politz said. “It’s interesting to see what could be done to these pastries with simple testing, but the consequence is that queasy feeling you get in your stomach.”
The students then traveled across the school to Dr. Hademenos physics class to test the thermal conductivity of the cream filling. After several minutes of exposed flame and sensitive thermometer analysis, the class came to the conclusion it didn’t have much dairy in it, as expected.
“You realize these things are something you really wouldn’t want to eat,” senior Sarah Jones said. “But the lesson was more than just about the Twinkie. It showed that the food we eat now isn’t really food. Not completely.
Twinkie Day from Talon Online on Vimeo.