Classroom Questions

Questions for ‘Scientists get smart about farts with new underwear sensor’ 

An illustration of a woman in a yellow shirt and jeans standing in a field smelling flowers and farting. Flower petals blow behind her.

“Zen digesters” rarely fart. “Hydrogen hyperproducers” fart a lot. To figure out what’s typical, scientists have devised a device to turn your undies into “smart underwear” to detect gas.

Pete Ryan

By Science News Explores

To accompany ‘Scientists get smart about farts with new underwear sensor’

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

  1. What are two things about a fart that a scientist might measure? For each, describe what scientists might learn about human biology by taking such measurements.
  2. What is a field of science that might benefit from a better understanding of flatulence? Briefly explain your answer.

During Reading:

  1. Describe the first attempt to measure flatulence by the researchers in the story.
  2. Were researchers satisfied with their initial experimental setup? How did the experimental design of their study evolve?
  3. What exactly does the new “smart underwear” measure?
  4. Researchers discovered a great deal of variability in how often people fart per day. In initial studies, what was the fewest number of farts recorded in a day? What was the highest? What was the average number of farts recorded per day?
  5. Why don’t scientists know how much people fart at night? Until now, what had been lacking?
  6. What data did volunteers participating in the Human Flatus Project need to collect?
  7. What were two reasons the underwear sensor sometimes “failed”?
  8. List the three main categories into which research participants tended to fall. Describe what each category means in terms of fart frequency.

After Reading:

  1. Describe the gap in medical knowledge pointed out by researchers in this study. Why do you think this aspect of human biology is so little studied? Give a specific reason. After reading this story, do you think that fart science is understudied, appropriately studied or overstudied? Explain your answer.
  2. What service does Ventoscity hope to provide to companies? Come up with one other potential application for this technology and explain how it could benefit people.