I used the scientific method along with productivity today when I caught Fruit Flies in two separate traps. As it turned out, the fruit flied discovered the half-banana that Mom tried eating 3 years ago and decided to invade it .
since the instructions guide you to use Cider vinegar as bait, I think that this will work better than the rancid banana bait.
Here are the results to my experiment.
MIN.2 – 1 0 0
MIN.3 – 2 1 0
MIN.4 – 3 1 0
MIN.5 – 5-6 3 0
MIN.6 – 6 3 0
MIN.7 – ? 3 0
MIN.8 – ? 3 0
MIN.9 – ? 3 0
MIN.10- ? 4 0
Sorry about the bad layout.
As you can probably see, Roob-Poob slept through the whole experiment. )c:
The vinegar was pure insanity to the flies. The minute the trap was prepared, the flies swarmed it and it got twice as much as the rancid banana in half the time, then got uncountable. In fact, the only two flies that didn’t get caught were the ones that never found either trap, but found my dinner instead. I think that the Cider Vinegar is worth getting for this experiment. And the banana is still ok in a pinch. Cats are outdated.
Universal Variables
- The traps were not set at the same time. The rancid banana was out longer than the vinegar.
- One of the flies escaped and so I put clay clogs around all of the holes on both of the traps.
- We started eating dinner in the middle of the experiment, therefore distorting the flies sensors, causing two to stray.
- Mom was cleaning the kitchen with soap.
- After the ten minutes the two other flies went into the vinegar trap.
- After another ten minutes, more flies came and got trapped in the rancid banana trap because the other one was too full.
- Take a piece of paper and roll it into a funnel.
- Tape it and put it into a jar with Cider Vinegar.
- Get some clay and roll it into a long worm and put it around the rim of the bottle where the paper funnel and the rim touch.
WOW!!! That was a great experiment and it was not even an assignment. Whoever would have guessed that Cider Vinegar would work better for this than a rancid banana. This was just an EXCELLENT effort.
Hey Dad! If the Larsons don’t give us the article about the Egyptians, we’ll put Christian’s experiment in this issue (and put the Larson’s in the Feb/March issue)
ain’t (the experiment) that funky now?
Dear Christian:
Keep up the good work. Maybe you could market these traps as environmentally kitchen, pet and people friendly alternatives to the chemical traps. Here is southern Idaho where we have large potato cellars there are swarms of small flies (clouds of them actually) the size of fruit flies that emerge from the cellars when they open them and clean them out getting ready to store the new potato harvest. I wonder if cider vinegar would work on them. Instead of a fruit jar, one would have to have a metal drum of the cider (or whatever would work with them) and a funnel six feet tall,and about 20 of the traps in each potato cellar. But whoever could invent something like that to trap these potato flies would be a hero around here when these potato cellar flies plague the communities. And the traps would be environmentally friendly, unlike some of the insecticides which can’t be used around the potatoes stored in the cellars.
JoAnn Waldo
Christian, Wow I bet you are your Mom’s hero!!! She told me how she hated those flies. What a great experiment!
Fantastic Job Christian!!! Awesome!!
Cousin Julia
HA! That’s hillarious!!
Am I gonna get to see you guys this Christmas??
Hey Christian,
I really liked your experiment, when you come to Monterrey we will certainly use it since we have a lot of
flies and mosquitos (“zancudos”) down here in Mexico 🙂
Jorge and I did several experiments when we were your age, some were succesful some others
did not work, in some cases we really destroyed some electronic devices (the firs recorders Dad buyed 🙁
and also some of your Mom dolls. At that time we were very interested in taking out any motor or
electronic control that were inside the toys. We putted a propeller into the motor and a battery,
we enjoyed it better than the toys.
I think the problem was that we used the empiric method (test and error iterations), we did not followed the scientific method as you are doing.
Keep up the good work ! ah, do not forget to bring your experiment to kill the local mosquitos, ok?
Tio Lauro.
Hunter Summey
Awesome! Christian,I really wish you would make entries to your blog as often as your Dad!
Thanks for the note, Hunter. We missed you as Shelby.
Hunter
Oh,Please write something on here,Christian!
Hunter
Please?!
Hunter
Do you even look at this thing?!?!
Hunter. He does not see much of the stuff from a long time ago. I will let him know you posted here.
P.S. It was good to see you yesterday!