Kitchen chemistry

What a week! In small groups students have chosen a food product to explore the chemical changes that happen when they are made or cooked, and over the last couple of days they have made the products themselves. Products made include:
 - ginger beer
 - oreo ice cream
 - banana ice cream
 - smoking warehau
 - cooking meat
 - bread
 - souffle
 - meringues and
 - dried apples.
Another group has explored whether food is acidic or alkaline, and what happens when two types are combined.

There's been a development of reading skills, focusing on the method of the recipes, development of culinary skills, development of taste buds and development of curiosity (wondering how they could have improved their recipe), as well as lots of fun. Things haven't always worked out exactly as expected but, like all good cooks, we've learned lessons along the way about the importance of following a recipe, measuring and careful observing.

Turning cream into...

 We have been learning a little about fats. We need to eat them to keep our body healthy, and our body stores them.  We discussed how scientists are reconsidering how much fat is bad for us, and comparing it with questioning how much sugar is bad for us. We learned how oil is the name for a liquid fat.

We practiced using our thinking as scientists ideas: predict, observe and explain; by predicting what would happen to cream if it was shaken hard. We took turns shaking it and stopped it every minute to observe what changes had happened. Within four minutes of very vigorous shaking it had turned into cream and buttermilk!

Some of us had predicted this and others were surprised. The fat molecules in the cream stuck together and the product was cream, leaving some buttermilk left over.

Those of us who wanted to had a taste - it was pretty good!

Have a look at this video to see a Russian fairy tale about this, and the value of persevering, one of the character strengths we're learning about.

The nature of water

We've started conducting some experiments and looking at the nature of matter. Today Gabrielle's base group looked at what the universe is made of - solids, liquids and gases. We focused on water, the only thing that can be all of these and looked at how adding energy, or heat, changes the nature of ice to water to steam.

We talked about how water is made up to two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Then, in groups of three, we made ourselves into water molecules and acted out being in a dense solid state (ice), a fluid liquid state (water) and energetic steam. Can you tell which we are in each picture?


The wind was pushing the gas/steam around a lot today!