Materials:
Liquorice strands – the black ones work best
Tooth picks
Maynards sweets or any small sweets with 4 different colours or shapes
Method:
Build a ladder. The rungs of the ladder are made up of two sweets.
The colours of the sweets are very important. Only two colours can match with each other, this represents DNA complementary base pairing. Whichever two colours you use, they must be the same all the way down the ladder.
Once you have decided on the colours you are going to match, start inserting the tooth picks into both of the sweets, leaving a little of the end of the tooth pick visible so this can be inserted into both of the liquorice strands.
Once you have around 6 tooth picks with 2 sweets on them, insert the liquorice strands into either end to make a straight ladder. Now twist you ladder to make it look like a spiral – this is your DNA double helix.
Results:
A spiral staircase which represents a DNA double helix.
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