Chemistry of Food and Cooking "The Perfection of Chocolate Meringues"
1. Cooking transforms food through a series of different chemical reactions where a substance changes in mass, volume, and appearance. It wasn’t until this project started taking motion that I began to realize how much chemistry is involved with cooking. After I made my first batch of meringues, I noticed that when applying heat or ingredients changes the overall product you are trying to make. Adding ingredients or heat can change the food through chemical reactions where the molecular structure is rearranged creating a new substance. Depending on the food you are making, a certain step can have a tremendous change on it’s appearance or texture. I noticed this while changing my variable to see if different forms of egg whites affected the mass, texture, or taste of the meringues. I found that by changing the form of the egg whites affected their taste and texture but had no effect on the their mass. I concluded my experiment by noticing that the viscosity of the egg whites changes the structure and the amount of time it takes to form soft and hard peaks. These types of tests can be done with any type of food because almost everything that can be cooked involves chemical reactions and science.
2. Doing science and cooking can be similar through several ways through the process and achieving your final result. Cooking always requires a recipe like how doing a science experiment always needs a procedure to follow. The next thing you do is you find your materials or ingredients that you will be using to create your final product. You also need to measure out your quantities correctly or the product could be affected just by having too much or too little of something. The rest of the process involves several chemical reactions that take place to change your initial substances to something completely different. There are also differences between cooking and science. Cooking is different from science because when cooking, the final goal is to create a dish that is appealing and tastes good. When performing a science experiment, our goal is to find as much quantitative data as we can where to cooking is meant to achieve qualitative results. A chef and a food scientist are the same in the way that they both work with food but their jobs are almost completely different. Food scientists use science to make sure the food that we eat is safe to eat and to find out if it is being made properly. A chef uses the food that food scientist approves of to create food that is rich in taste and appealing to the pubic. Even though both occupations are different, they both still work to make sure people are satisfied with what they are consuming.
2. Doing science and cooking can be similar through several ways through the process and achieving your final result. Cooking always requires a recipe like how doing a science experiment always needs a procedure to follow. The next thing you do is you find your materials or ingredients that you will be using to create your final product. You also need to measure out your quantities correctly or the product could be affected just by having too much or too little of something. The rest of the process involves several chemical reactions that take place to change your initial substances to something completely different. There are also differences between cooking and science. Cooking is different from science because when cooking, the final goal is to create a dish that is appealing and tastes good. When performing a science experiment, our goal is to find as much quantitative data as we can where to cooking is meant to achieve qualitative results. A chef and a food scientist are the same in the way that they both work with food but their jobs are almost completely different. Food scientists use science to make sure the food that we eat is safe to eat and to find out if it is being made properly. A chef uses the food that food scientist approves of to create food that is rich in taste and appealing to the pubic. Even though both occupations are different, they both still work to make sure people are satisfied with what they are consuming.
Water Quality in the Animas River Watershed
- Something that I learned throughout the process of this project was how many pounds of minerals were found in the Animas River after the Gold King mine spill occurred. I thought that this was very interesting content because when the event occured, people didn’t really think that much of it because it wasn’t harming any aquatic life or other environmental properties. After seeing the results taken from the spill, I was able to make connections as to why the river turned the color it did. Overall I thought that it was very beneficial to have a better understanding of how the Gold King had an effect on the aquatic and environmental life along the Animas River.
- Throughout this project I learned a new skill along with learning new ways to improve some of my other known skills. One of the new skills that I learned was how to do more creative designs in Google Sketchup while helping Carter with certain parts of our design process. I thought that it was very cool to observe Carter designing our prototype sketch for the exhibit and allowed me to learn new tools within the program. I had used Sketchup before for other school related projects but didn’t get to learn the other tools that we were able to use in this project. Another skill that was improved throughout the process of this project was my research skill. This project allowed me to research several websites relating to the Gold King mine spill which contained information that would help us grow as learners and our knowledge on the topic. Researching content helped me improve my knowledge on the water treatment process and the effects acid mine drainage has on aquatic and environmental life.
- I thought that the study of water quality within our community was very interesting to learn about and provided me with information I had no understanding of before the start of the project. I speak for myself when I say that I learned a tremendous amount of information in this project while others may have found it similar to past projects they may have done. I feel that as a community member of Durango, it is important to understand the quality of the water that we drink and the environment that the aquatic life lives in. I do believe that this project did not contain a lot chemistry content, but I think that it was a good change that benefited in students creating interesting projects that were interesting to them. I think that for the future this project should be continued because of the large amount of topics for students to choose from and the benefits it has on us as community members.