Food Science

Organized by: Natt Supab, Rachel Cranfill, Darryl Yong

The real plan:

We're going to have ? stations.

1. Egg magic: We have eggs that have been soaked in vinegar, and we can demo how these eggs can go into a bottle without breaking. We also have another demo about floating eggs. Start by slowly filling a wide-mouth quart jar half full of tap water. Gently lower a raw egg (not a hardboiled egg) into the jar. You will notice that the egg remains on the bottom of the jar. Now using a wooden or plastic spoon, gently stir the water as you slowly pour about a half cup of kitchen salt into the water. You want the salt to dissolve as you stir it rather than pile up on the bottom of the jar.

2. Pickle power: see below.

3. Citrus magic:

Find a dime and penny dated before 1987 and wash them thoroughly. Have a parent cut two slits in another juicy lemon, about 1/4 inch apart, and insert the coins halfway into each slit. Stick out your tongue and touch both coins simultaneously. You'll feel it tingling: that's electricity!

Also lemon juice keeps fruit from turning brown.

Ideas and notes:

  • I guess we should figure out what kind of food science activities we are going to be doing. I know that in class, someone mentioned talking about how egg structure proteins change when you cook eggs. I also found this website: external link: http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/index.html . It has lots of information on "the science of cooking," so maybe we can find some ideas there.
  • the only "food science" activities that I can think of are

1) trying to get an egg into a narrow-mouthed bottle without breaking it. we can see what the students try to do to solve this problem, and then bring out eggs soaked in vinegar (for 24 hours, I think) and show them how easy it is to pop that into the bottle and explain why vinegar dissolves egg shells. I don't know whether this is a whole hour-long activity, though.

2) making rock candy, but this would take more than a day!

  • This is something that has to be done overnight, too, but it sounds really cool: if you leave fruit in a nalgene with dry ice overnight, you get carbonated fruit! So maybe we could do it ahead of time and then bring the stuff to Pomona High School with us and explain what happened and so on. Here is a video: external link: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Carbonated-Fruit/

Trang Pham says: We made carbonated fruit for Sontag Wine & Cheese, and it only took a few hours. This would be a nice treat for the students. Also, you guys have great ideas, but they all require more than one day. :/ How about, cutting up apples and avocados and have the students explain why they brown. Have them come up with ways to preserve the fruits?

  • Other things to do with pickles are to plug them into the wall (yes, 120V AC through a pickle). It smells terrible, but lights up. Then you could explain the significance of the yellow light.

-->> what do we use to plug the pickles in??

  • Less cool, but fairly cheap, is demonstrating what happens to meat and stuff when it enters your stomach. If I remember correctly, Coke is about the same pH as stomach acid, so if you just leave a chunk of meat sitting in pop for the hour or so, you can watch it change over time.

Supplies needed:

  • raw eggs
  • vinegar
  • large bowl (for soaking)
  • small-necked bottles (not TOO small, just smaller than an egg!)
  • pickles

Outline of the activity:

timewhat's happening
3:00-3:10intro
3:10-3:20let the students try to get eggs into bottles
3:20-3:30bring out the prepared eggs, explain to them what happened
3:30-3:40mint lifesavers lightning-in-mouth thing
3:40-3:50plug pickle into wall! explain what's happening
3:50-4:00serve carbonated fruit while talking about the process?