What repels a cockroach?
Experiment by putting a piece of bread in one end of a box and adding a cockroach.
How long does it take for the cockroach to start eating the bread?
Then, place a piece of peeled garlic into the box.
Observe.
Is the cockroach attracted to the garlic or repelled by it?
Try bay leaves or cucumbers.
Does your cockroach say "No thanks!
" to these?
Experiment with other foods.
Get out the calculators.
A female German cockroach reproduces four to eight times in its life cycle, laying seven to eight egg cases, each case containing 35 to 40 eggs.
About how many offspring might one female German cockroach have?
Divide students into groups to solve the problem.
Give each group a package of kidney beans to predict how many cockroaches their female would produce.
Put all the beans together to see the effects of cockroach reproduction.
Find out how smart a cockroach can be.
Design a cockroach maze.
Start with a baking pan half-filled with water.
Build a maze using several 6-oz.
cans and strips of cardboard.
Arrange the cans in the pan and place thecardboard strips on top of the cans to create two pathways.
One pathway leads to the cockroach's home, the other leads to a dead-end.
Put your cockroach at the start of the maze and observe.