Chemistry of Food and Cooking “Fabulous Fudge”:
How does the ingredient you experimented with affect the food’s overall characteristics? Be specific and discuss the chemical structure of the ingredient and the chemical structures of the aspects of the food the chosen ingredient interacted with as part of your answer!
The ingredient I experimented with is sugar. I was using it to affect the fudge texture. Depending on the temperature you heat the fudge up too, the sugar will make it smooth or grainy. If you stir it at a lower temperature the fudge will be smooth. It will smooth because the particles have cooled down enough to not cluster together. The reaction happens because the fudge is over saturated with sugar. So the sugar is technically reacting with the sugar, but the change in temperature between each batch is what changed the results. The temperature was the independent variable. The characteristics of my fudge were almost as I expected. I first made the normal batch but I stirred it for too long so it had the consistency of a chocolate bar. The second batch was supposed to be undercooked but it was more accurate to the recipe. I had a hard time accurately changing the temperature because I made such small batches. I expected to have a softer one instead of a soft, hard and overcooked batch.
How successful was your experiment in helping you understand your food and improve its characteristics? What would be next steps if you were to continue research on this topic? In support of your answer you might choose to discuss any of the following or other questions of your own design:
My experiment was very successful in helping me understand my food. I didn’t yield the exact results I expected, mostly because I made such small batches and it was hard to regulate the temperature because the fudge cooked so fast. I definitely understand how to manipulate the sugar in a batch of fudge to get a desired texture. The reason my fudge experiment didn’t work out quite how I hoped is because my IV wasn’t accurately measured so the fudge recipe. Next steps in manipulating the fudge would be to make the recipe sizes larger so I can make the heating times more spaced out instead of only 30 seconds apart doing that would make me more confident in my results. I would try that and then see how else I could manipulate the experiment to make it work better.
The ingredient I experimented with is sugar. I was using it to affect the fudge texture. Depending on the temperature you heat the fudge up too, the sugar will make it smooth or grainy. If you stir it at a lower temperature the fudge will be smooth. It will smooth because the particles have cooled down enough to not cluster together. The reaction happens because the fudge is over saturated with sugar. So the sugar is technically reacting with the sugar, but the change in temperature between each batch is what changed the results. The temperature was the independent variable. The characteristics of my fudge were almost as I expected. I first made the normal batch but I stirred it for too long so it had the consistency of a chocolate bar. The second batch was supposed to be undercooked but it was more accurate to the recipe. I had a hard time accurately changing the temperature because I made such small batches. I expected to have a softer one instead of a soft, hard and overcooked batch.
How successful was your experiment in helping you understand your food and improve its characteristics? What would be next steps if you were to continue research on this topic? In support of your answer you might choose to discuss any of the following or other questions of your own design:
My experiment was very successful in helping me understand my food. I didn’t yield the exact results I expected, mostly because I made such small batches and it was hard to regulate the temperature because the fudge cooked so fast. I definitely understand how to manipulate the sugar in a batch of fudge to get a desired texture. The reason my fudge experiment didn’t work out quite how I hoped is because my IV wasn’t accurately measured so the fudge recipe. Next steps in manipulating the fudge would be to make the recipe sizes larger so I can make the heating times more spaced out instead of only 30 seconds apart doing that would make me more confident in my results. I would try that and then see how else I could manipulate the experiment to make it work better.
SARS-CoV-2 Chemistry Project:
- How can the lens of chemistry be used to inform societal practice and policy designed to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2? The lens of chemistry can be used to inform society and help with policy design to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by providing facts and data to make sure what policies are being made are the most credible. To bring some humanities into it, chemistry can be the ethos of a corona virus policy. The research chemists and other scientists are doing help us get more info on the virus which continues to make our policies on it better. At the beginning of the semester I knew everything I just wrote to be true, but I did gain more of an understanding of the actual research and investigation chemists will use. I also didn’t have as good of an understanding of chemistry at the beginning of the semester so now I understand more things related to chemistry which helped me stay informed on how to limit COVID-19. I also know how soap works now which I did not know at the beginning of the semester.
- How did your knowledge of science grow through your work on the project? - My knowledge of science grew quite a bit this semester. I have a basic understanding of chemistry, more of an understanding of how cells work and reproduce, and I understand how soap works. I have a much greater understanding of how vaccines are made and the tests that they have to go through before they can be distributed to the public. I understand how a team of scientists will work on a certain problem and how they will test something many times to get a concrete result. Lastly, I’m more comfortable working with certain chemicals now after I used the sodium hydroxide to make soap.
- I personally don’t feel like I missed out much because Covid-19 is so relevant to our lives I think it’s important we learned about it. I feel that if we were focusing more on chemistry it would be hard because we couldn’t do as many labs or even go up to FLC to do labs. If we were trying to have more of a traditional chemistry class I think we would’ve faced challenges that we didn’t have to face in our coronavirus unit. We also have another semester of chemistry class that I think would be good if we used it for a more traditional chemistry class. I do think the benefits of learning about coronavirus outweighed what we might have done if we were purely focusing on chemistry. I believe that mainly because of the many corona virus related challenges we would’ve faced if we were to have focused mainly on chemistry.