How Scientists Count Farts

Grade level
Time
23 minutes
Start the lessonPrint the worksheetTeacher guide
Time
38 minutes
Start the lessonPrint the worksheetTeacher guide
Time
35 minutes
Start the lessonPrint the worksheetTeacher guide
Dried beans in many colors at a farmers market
Sources
  1. Santiago Botasini, Brantley Hall and colleagues, University of Maryland, Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X, 2025
  2. Brantley Hall’s lab, University of Maryland, ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT07134543
  3. Michael Levitt, Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 1979
  4. J. K. Furne and Michael Levitt, Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 1996
  5. J. Tomlin, C. Lowis and N. W. Read, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, UK, Gut, 1991
  6. Emily Brindal and Danielle Baird, CSIRO, Australia, JAMA Network Open, 2026
  7. I. Rowland, G. Gibson, A. Heinken, K. Scott, J. Swann, I. Thiele and K. Tuohy, European Journal of Nutrition, 2018
  8. N. W. Smith, P. R. Shorten, E. H. Altermann, N. C. Roy and W. C. McNabb, Gut Microbes, 2019
  9. University of Maryland, “UMD Scientists Create ‘Smart Underwear’ to Measure Human Flatulence”, February 11, 2026
  10. Human Flatus Atlas, the study’s enrollment site
  11. Vision and Change core concepts and competencies, as summarized in Brownell and others, CBE Life Sciences Education, 2014
  12. Word origins from Dictionary.com: flatus, inflate, inflation, conflate, flatulent, microbiome, micro-, bio-, biome, -ome, microbe
  13. Spanish and Italian words from Wiktionary: inflar, fiato
  14. Video quotes from YouTube’s auto-generated captions