Recent Gen Z scientists have developed new technology to analyze past high school students through the layers of gum tacked under decades-old tables. Although the study of Gumology has been spit on since its founding, Lexington High School students have worked toward decreasing the stickma by bringing the ground-breaking analysis technology, STICKY, into their own science classes.
Led by the LHS Science Department Head, Mr. ExtraHubbaBubba, students have been spotted determinedly scraping gum off tables with Exacto knives. In their experiments, they analyze the number of folds and creases in each sample of gum, which is directly correlated to the sharpness of jaws.
“We can actually date these specimens with remarkable accuracy,” Melin Dall, a leading researcher in the emerging field of Gum Forensics, said. “The deeper we go, the sharper the jawlines are. By the time we hit the 2010 layer, we’re looking at 90-degree angles! Choose wisely, kids: mewing or gum for the jawline that can cut through stone?”
Additionally, the discoloring and the elasticity of the gum, after its many years of winking at school floors, has been shown to demonstrate the state of mind of the student chewing on it at the time. One of ExtraHubbaBubba’s most famous experiments involves classifying levels of boredom.
“When the gum is discolored to a faint blue and stiff in its spine, the student is simply sleepy and in need of a good stretch and a change of topic. When the gum is discolored to a washed-out red and is flexible at the edges, the student is bored to the point of drawing on tables and yawning wide enough to see down their throat. When the gum is discolored to a vivid yellow and soft in the spine, the student is quite ready to melt into their chair and then slide out of the room as a puddle,” ExtraHubbaBubba said.
Another interesting observation is that chewing gum during language classes has been found to enhance articulation, leading to what scholars call “flavorful speech.” In an experiment conducted by the Linguistic Gum Society (LGS), students who chewed red or pink gum displayed an unusual mastery of Shakespearean and TikTok dialogue.
“There’s no discrimination in flavor,” Idon Slipinouff, the President of the LGS, said. “High school students experiment with all kinds of flavors, from watermelon to mint, improving languages from Italian to Mandarin to the acronyms on TikTok. They try everything—both academically and in their choice of gum.”
As we continue to unearth the rich history preserved beneath classroom desks, one thing remains clear: high school students may come and go, but their gum, their jawlines, their boredom, and their speech? That stays forever.