06: i love food

okay, so i’ve found this great website that has a super awesome list of possible food-related experiments and most of them explain how to conduct an experiment to explore the ideas. if anyone wants the link (*cough* pauline *cough*) it’s:
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/recommender_interest_area.php?ia=FoodSci&dl=9

so far the things that have caught my eyes are:
“stop slumping: what makes foams stand up straight”
tests several different liquids by shaking them up to create foam and measuring the distance between certain points.

“candy chromatography: what makes those colours?”
using candy such as m&m’s (yum. :D) or skittles, food colouring and basic chromatography methods to determine what food colours are actually used to achieve the colouring in candy.

“temper, temper, temper! the science of tempering chocolate”
no basic testing is given but research could be done to come up with an experiment.

“from bitter to sweet: how sugar content changes in ripening fruit”
requires a refractometer so this is off the list. D:

“do oranges lose or gain vitamin C after being picked?”
requires a LOT of equipment i do not have, so this is off too. D:

i would love to do the m&m’s experiment but i think it’s a bit too simple. my next choice would probably be the foam one, but i would need to find some test tubes and rubber stoppers. for the chocolate tempering, the website describes some of the things that could be tested:

“In this science fair project, investigate how different temperatures affect the resulting melted chocolate. After tempering, brush some of the chocolate on wax paper. Does the chocolate harden or does it stay soft? Is it shiny or blotchy? Can you peel it off or does it stick to the paper? Try tempering dark chocolate and white chocolate. Is there a difference in the tempering temperature for each one? Once you have figured out the tempering process of your favourite chocolate, use your recipe to cover nuts, strawberries, or your favourite treat.”

i’ll probably end up doing the foam one if i do one of these three but it would be absolute fun to do the tempering experiment. the tempering experiment also has heaps of variables, so...yeah...

akaTODAY

**UPDATE:

i've just re-read the email that was sent to us & i'm quickly going to add some stuff.

okay, so then for the foam experiment, it's basically getting several different liquids, placing them in separate test tubes with a rubber stopper. the starting liquid height is noted. the tubes are then shaken for a set amount of time and the top of the liquid and the top of the foam is noted. the variables:

independent--size of text tube; amount of each liquid; time used to shake the liquid; the type of liquid

dependent--the amount of foam produced; the temperature on the day;

okay, so i've added temperature as a variable because the original experiment seems a little simple so i might test the same thing but with the added factor of temperature.