ON BREAK:

For freshmen at the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s Early College High School, the road to a four-year university began with a cup of Skittles.

On Thursday morning in Candace Leuthold’s science class, students sat in groups around the room with blindfolds, plastic forks and cups full of the brightly-colored candies. Their object was to use the scientific method — identifying a problem, gathering information, making a hypothesis, testing it, gathering data and making a conclusion — on a real-life problem. To sweeten the process, Leuthold had them do an experiment with taste.

Or, rather, the lack thereof.

The purpose of the experiment was to find if students could tell green Skittles from yellow ones by using their tongues alone. As a result, participants blindfolded themselves and covered their noses while classmates slipped the chewy treats into their mouths.

Each student consumed five yellows and five greens, and had to determine — without the benefit of sight or smell — whether each one was lime, lemon or the occasional other flavor that the teacher had sneaked in. As snack times go, it was difficult work.

“Am I done yet?” Dylan Torres, 14, asked at one point as a member of his group prepared to spoon another Skittle into his mouth.

“No, you’ve still got two more,” said Pedro Cervantes, 14.

As the kids sampled Skittles one by one, they guessed their color out loud while classmates wrote down their answers. Afterward, each student determined his or her average for guessing correctly. Some found it easier — and posted a higher average — than others.

“I think the lime was a little bit sweeter, and it had a longer taste,” said Zach Muradian, 14. “The lemon kind of shorted out.”

The Skittles project marked the first science lab at Early College High School, a campus that opened in Newport-Mesa last week. The school, housed on the Back Bay/Monte Vista alternative education campus, allows students to graduate in five years with a high school diploma and an associate in arts degree.

Leuthold, who has taught in Newport-Mesa for nine years, became the Early College’s first science teacher when she moved over from Newport Harbor High School this summer. She used the Skittles lab to demonstrate the steps of the scientific method.

Whether lemon and lime Skittles taste the same through a plugged nose, Leuthold admitted that she wasn’t sure.

“I’m not a big candy eater myself,” she said.