SUBJECTS: Science, Mathematics
SKILLS:
Applying, classifying, collaborating, communicating, comparing similarities and differences, cooperating, describing, discussing, formulating questions, identifying, listening, observing, predicting, solving problems, sorting, thinking creatively, writing
OBJECTIVES:
The student will:
- discuss how deductive questions were formulated and how clues were used to discover relationships;
- hypothesize relationships among by-products;
- give examples of principal products and by-products from cattle; and
- identify at least six by-products from cattle.
ESTIMATED TEACHING TIME:
Session One: 20 minutes.
Session Two: 45 to 60 minutes.
(Can be taught in one session.)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION:
Teams of students solve a mystery about cattle by-products. Students formulate questions about the mystery. Then they think critically about relationships among various products made from cattle.

MATERIALS:
Writing materials
Assorted products made from cattle by-products (students bring from home, see List of Mystery Items sheet)
Transparencies of the attached List of Mystery Items and Detective Rules sheets.
Optional: encyclopedias, dictionaries, and the Internet.
VOCABULARY: beef by-product cattle cow edible inedible product
SUPPORTING INFORMATION:
Most people easily identify milk and meat with cattle. Few people know that gelatin and cattle have a similar relationship, however. Milk, meat and gelatin are all produced from cattle. Principal products, such as milk and meat, are the main products of cattle. By-products such as gelatin, on the other hand, are secondary products.
Often it is difficult to spot the connection between by-products and their origins.
The manufacturing process changes the form of the items making them difficult to recognize. For example, cattle bones contain gelatin. This gelatin is processed to become a part of some yogurt and marshmallow products.
Cattle’s principal products are a variety of meats such as steak, roast, hamburger, liver, corned beef, and pastrami. About half of the animal is consumed as meat or meat products. Surprisingly, almost half of the animal is used in byproducts.
Few people are aware of all the byproducts of cattle. The by-products from cattle fall into two main categories, edible and inedible by people. The variety of by-products manufactured from cattle is amazing!

Basic edible cattle by-products include:
(Used in some products and some brand names, but not all.)
Gelatin from bones used in
-jello
-yogurt
-jelly
-marshmallows
-"gummy-type" candies
-soft-shell capsules (medicine)
Fatty acid-base from fats used in
-chewing gum
-oleo margarine
-oleo shortening
Plasma protein from blood used in
-cake mixes
-deep-fry batters
-pasta
-imitation seafood
Basic inedible cattle by-products include:
Intestines used in
-tennis racquet strings
-instrument strings
Gelatin made from bones used in
-photographic film
-film binder
-crispness for bank notes
-paper and cardboard glues
-emery boards
-glues
-hemostatic sponges
-biological adhesives

Fats and fatty acids used in
-cosmetics
-detergent
-cellophane
-floor wax
-deodorants
-pet foods
-livestock feeds
-candles
-insecticides
-crayons
-soap
-shaving cream
-perfumes
-lubricant fluids
-plastics
-tires
Hooves and horns used in
-imitation tortoise shell
-combs
-imitation ivory
-piano keys
-pet chews
-decorative items (horns)
Hide used as leather or suede in upholstery, luggage, clothing, gloves, wallets, purses, boots, shoes, athletic shoes (shiny white)
Hair used in expensive artists’ paint brushes, felt for weather stripping
Blood factors used for treatment of hemophilia
Research uses bioactive peptides, immuno-chemicals, tissue culture medium

Organs pancreas - insulin for some diabetics adrenal glands - epinephrin (adrenalin) to treat allergic shock, allergies pituitary - ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone) to treat allergic diseases
Items manufactured from inedible cattle byproducts impact us daily. The deodorant you used this morning, the photographic film in your camera, even the adhesive for the wallpaper or paint on the walls of your home - all may have been made in part from cattle by-products.
In this lesson, you will be drawing upon your students’ natural curiosity and enthusiasm for solving mysteries. While teaching critical-thinking skills, you will teach processes students can use in the future.
Students formulate questions, gather data and test hypotheses. They learn to discover the relation of many seemingly unrelated items.
GETTING STARTED:
Make a transparency of List of Mystery Items and Detective Rules sheets. From the List of Mystery Items, have students bring items to conduct the lesson.
Optional: Use the List of Mystery Items to write a letter to parents explaining your request for the items. Be careful not to give the solution away!
PRE-LAB:
1.
Have students create a list of products we get from animals. (Make a game of it – the student with the longest list wins a prize.)
PROCEDURE:
SESSION ONE
1. Several days before the activity, show the transparency List of Mystery Items.
2. Tell students they are going to solve a mystery surrounding these items.
Ask for volunteers to bring to class one or more of the items so the mystery can be solved. The items will be returned. Students may draw or bring pictures of items that are difficult to bring to class, such as tires and piano keys.

SESSION TWO
1. On a table, arrange all the items students have brought. To build anticipation and curiosity, do this early in the day. Give students ample opportunity to view all the items. Do not share any relation or information about the items with the students!
2. In a visible place, write “Every item on the table has something in common, a
relationship.” Tell students their job, to be done in small detective teams, will be to discover this relationship. Form small detective teams of preferably three students. Show the Detective Rules transparency and discuss the rules. (Stress that you are encouraging team “think” time. You do not want anyone calling out the answer while others are still contemplating the relationship. Explain that working together is important.)
3. Briefly, practice writing “yes” or “no” questions. Have teams write several “yes” or “no” questions. For example, they should write “Is it Monday?” instead of “What day is it?” Once students understand the questioning technique, have teams write
10 questions about the items. After teams have generated their 10 questions, explain that they will want to listen to other teams’ questions. This will help teams to:
- avoid repeating the same question;
- modify their questions based on new information;
- formulate new questions; and
- gather information for guessing the relationship.
Encourage teams to take ample time in asking, modifying and forming new questions. Remind them of the 20-question limit. If a team asks a question that cannot be answered “yes” or “no,” the team must rephrase it or forfeit its turn to another team.
4. Return to the statement “Every item on the table has something in common, a
relationship.” Have teams begin to ask “yes” or “no” questions. Record a tally mark each time a question is asked so teams know how many questions remain. Anytime after the 10th question, teams may guess the relation. If a guess is incorrect, take more questions or allow another team to guess. Students should be able to guess the relationship within the 20-question limit. If not, extend the number and/or give sample clues. When a team states the relation correctly, write it in a visible place. (“All the mystery items are related to cattle." or “All the items are made or

produced with parts of cattle.”) Point out to students that some of the products and some name brands use cattle by-products, but not all.
5. Once the relation has been discovered, ask:
- What was easy about this activity? What was difficult?
- Which kinds of questions were most helpful in figuring out the relationship?
Why?
- Which were least helpful?
- What kind of information did your team need and not get from others’ questions?
- How did questions asked by others influence or change your team’s questions and your thinking about the relationship?
- What did you find your mind doing while your team was making up questions?
- When did your team think they knew the relationship?
- Which items on the table gave your team the best clues? Which items were the least helpful?
- When else have you used clues to discover relationships? (Movies, books, games, mystery stories, math, science, working a computer, solving a problem.)
6. Help students define the principal products and byproducts of cattle. (Principal products are the main products, and the by-products are the secondary products.)
Generate a list of cattle principal products, such as hamburger, steak, milk. Then generate a list of by-products. Discuss the similarities and differences in the two lists. Similarities and differences might include:
Principal Products
- produced directly from the cattle
- often easily recognized
By-Products
- go through manufacturing processes that change their form
- difficult to recognize as by-products
Explain that almost half of an animal is used for meat, but almost as much can be used in byproducts. Stress to students that through the use of by-products almost all of the animal is used.
7. Ask students to think of other ways the items on the table are related and could be grouped. Have students or teams of students continue to state relationships and form groups among the items on the table. An individual item may be in more

than one group. Have students justify the connections. The relationships are limitless and could include the part of the cow that the item comes from, the item’s use, the item’s users, the manufacturing process, its edibility, its appearance. (See Supporting Information.) Ask:
- What were the most surprising things you learned from this activity?
Least surprising?
- How will you use this questioning or problem solving strategy in the future?
- How can you improve your thinking process?
EVALUATION OPTIONS:
1. Have students write an explanation of how to ask good questions, listen, think, and look for clues to solve a problem. Have them explain how strategies they learned in this lesson will be useful in the future. The paper should focus on a problem, mystery or challenge they could solve by using these strategies.
2. Using the List of Mystery Items sheet, have students determine at least four relationships among the cattle by-products. Tell them to write the relationships as headings and categorize items under the appropriate heading.
3. Have students list at least six by-products produced from cattle.
4. Have students select a plant or animal and list two principal products and two by-products of that plant or animal.
EXTENSIONS AND VARIATIONS:
1. By-products manufactured from cattle are a renewable natural resource. Have students research renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. Discuss the differences and similarities. Ask, for example, “Would you prefer athletic shoes made from a renewable (leather) or a non-renewable (plastic- or petroleum-based) natural resource? Why?”
2. Conduct another 20-question, by-product activity. You could use a “Mystery List of Items” for eggs, soybeans, corn, and/or hogs. For eggs, include shampoo, facial mask, fertilizer, pet food, animal repellent, animal attractant, vaccine production, bacteria culture media, and purified protein research. For soybeans, include cooking oil, margarine, shortening, mayonnaise, salad dressing, tofu (soybean curd), milk, flour, meal, soy sauce, tamari, tempeh, bean sprouts, nuts, flakes, soy ink,

lubricants, paint pigments, varnish, linoleum, and packing peanuts. For corn, include baby foods, chewing gum, gelatin desserts, carbonated beverages, condensed milk, lactic acid, cooking oil, margarine, mayonnaise, potato chips, shortening, adhesives, candles, insecticides, sandpaper, drinking straws, and ethanol. For hogs, include lard, casings for processed meat, animal feed, fertilizer, insulin and other medicines, heart valves, insulation, upholstery, candles, soap, shaving cream, crayons, chalk, glue, brushes, and lubricating oils. Challenge students to create their own lists after researching other plants and animals. The class could institute a weekly by-product, 20-question game.
3. Have students research famous detectives or read detective novels such as the
Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Encyclopedia Brown collections. Have students discuss the kinds of questions detectives ask and why.
4. Students can call a meat-processing plant and ask what they do with the nonprincipal animal parts. Who do they sell them to? Have the class decide if other animals are used as efficiently as cattle.
CREDIT:
List of cattle by-products adapted from When Is a Cow
More Than a Cow? American National Cattlewomen,
Inc.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Things We Can Learn From a Cow and A Worm.
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, http:// www.teachfree.com
Wow That Cow. American National Cattlewomen. Inc.
PO Box 3881, Englewood CO 80155-3881. (303) 694-
0313. http://www.ancw.org/wow_cow.htm
WEB SITES:
American National Cattlewomen. Inc. PO Box 3881,
Englewood CO 80155-3881. (303) 694-0313. http://www.ancw.org
Beef.org. National Cattlemens Beef Association. 2002.

http://www.beef.org
Teach Free. National Cattlemens Beef Association.
2002. http://www.teachfree.com

12

*Original can be found at Utah Ag in the Classroom, http://extension.usu.edu