Eat a fortified cereal in the morning and you’re ingesting important elements—iron, for example. With this experiment, you can briefly separate the iron added to some cereals. Check the nutritional content on the side of cereal boxes in your house. We chose Cheerios because it had the highest percentage of iron per cup out of the three cereal brands in our kitchen cupboard. (This is not an example of product placement! Apparently the cereal Total works even better.)

• Iron-fortified cereal

• Blender

• Measuring cup

• Clear plastic cup

• Water

• Strong magnet

• Plastic spoon

1. Pour two cups of cereal and two cups of water into the blender. Leave the mixture for a few minutes to soften cereal. Blend until smooth.

2. Pour cereal mix into the plastic cup. (You’ll have lots of the mixture.)

3. Hold the magnet against the side of the cup while you use the spoon to gently stir the mixture. Be patient. Be gentle.

4. Take the magnet away.

Some iron in its elemental form is added to fortified cereals. These bits of iron are drawn to the side of the cup by the magnet—did you see the dark spot gather and then fade away when you took away the magnet?

The more patient you are with stirring and stirring the cereal mix, the darker the spot. (It took us quite a bit of gentle stirring.) Remove the magnet and the iron disperses back into the cereal