CANDY THAT TIME FORGOT\T.O. kids get tasty lesson.

Byline: Enrique Rivero Daily News Staff Writer

Bite-size dinosaurs will be making their way across country from Thousand Oaks to Maine encased in amber-colored lollipops.

The sugary "Jurassic Pops" are going to an East Coast junior high school as part of an eighth-grade science project at Redwood Intermediate School. The project integrates chemistry, physics, biology, geology, telecommunications, and even packaging, said science teacher Craig Fox said.

"I think of this class as basically problem-solving, and that is what modern workers will be challenged with," Fox said. "And they have to learn how to work together."

The "Jurassic Pops," cereal-covered chocolate over sweet suckers containing candy dinosaurs inside, are part of a reciprocal project with the Holbrook Middle School in East Holden, Maine. Fox's class exchanged an artificial snow ball for a real one via mail with the same school last year.

Why the Jurassic motif for this year's project?

It's less about science than it is about Steven Spielberg's cinematic blockbuster, "Jurassic Park," according to 13-year-old Varun Saxena.

"It's because this is supposed to be Hollywood, the entertainment capital of the world," said Varun.

In return, the California youngsters will get candy in the form of lobster claws, which represent Maine, he said.

Two classes with a total of 60 pupils are participating in the project, Fox said.

With its Bunsen burners, test tubes and other paraphernalia, Fox's lab may look like it's set up for science, but it smells more like a kitchen - or a candy store.

Pupils milled around the class Friday peering into glass tubes, examining the components of various solutions, and nibbling on big, colorful lollipops.

They were doing what Fox called a "forensic study" to determine the characteristic properties of the solutions the youngsters were using for the project.

"This happens to be part of our chemistry unit," Fox said. "It's kind of a fun way to do chemistry - it's less painful."

The dinosaur idea came from Jason Park, 14, who said that it occurred to him during a brainstorming session how similar lollipops were to amber. In the Spielberg movie, dinosaur's were created from DNA found in ancient mosquitoes encased in amber.

At first, he wanted to put a candy mosquito inside the lollipop core of the candy. "But you can't find mosquitoes anywhere," he said, adding that the dinosaurs were easy to find.

Working in groups, the pupils have had to learn for themselves the physical and chemical processes that make lollipops firm rather than gooey, the right mix of ingredients to get just the right flavor, how to give the candy its coloring, and the best packaging to prevent breakage or melting.

The pupils even put together a short music video "advertising" their work.

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PHOTO

Photo (1--color) Brian O'Neill inspects a substance used in making the eighth-grade class's "Jurassic Pops." (2--color) Varun Saxena, 13, displays a cereal-covered sweet lollipop that contains a candy dinosaur at its center. (3) Eighth-grade students in Craig Fox's science class at Redwood Intermediate School use computers to find out what lollipops are made of. Jeremy Greene/Special to the Daily News