• Question: Have you ever done an experiment with food???

    Asked by sophiehoward to Adam, Joanna, Louise S, Louise W, Marcus on 12 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Louise Walkin

      Louise Walkin answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      Recently…no. In the past yes! I remember having to do lots of experiments in school burning crisps with bunsen burners to determine how much energy was in them. I think we compared high fat and low fat crisps.

      I also remember my very first experiment in primary school which didn’t involve food as such but food colouring! We had daffodils in water and we added red food coloring to one of the waters and blue to the other. Then eventually the leaves of the daffodils went from yellow to either red or blue depending on what colour we had added. I remember being amazed at what had happened – and we were allowed to keep our newly coloured flowers, though they didn’t last long out of water! 🙂

    • Photo: Louise Stanley

      Louise Stanley answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      Same as Louise W! I have done in the past but not recently (apart from baking which i enjoy – which is also like science since I experiment different recipes; sometimes they work and taste nice but other times it doesn’t but it is all part of the learning curve!)

      For my CSYS (equivalent to A-level) biology project I remember working with beetroot. I was investigating the effect of different solutions, some with high levels of water (hypertonic) and others with low (hypotonic), on the beetroot. I measured their effect by collecting the solution I has placed the beetroot in and then measuring its aborbance on a spectrometer as depending on the effect that the solution has different amounts of the natural dye from the beetroot was released if the cell walls were broken. It was quite messy but fun!

    • Photo: Marcus Wilson

      Marcus Wilson answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      My cooking is a constant experiment with food!

      You can extract DNA from fruits or vegetables really easily, which is a lot of fun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPGKv53zSRQ

      And its always fun to freeze food in liquid nitrogen and then hit it with a hammer!

    • Photo: Adam Paige

      Adam Paige answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      We do some teaching experiments at the University here using onions. Red onions are very good for looking at how water moves in and out of cells (osmosis), whilst the root tips of spanish onions are useful for looking at chromosomes and trying to see cells dividing in two.

      There are also plenty of experiments to isolate DNA from fruits and veg (my daughter got DNA from a strawberry at a science fair here in Luton organised by a colleague of mine with the prize money she won from this competition two years ago).

    • Photo: Joanna Giles

      Joanna Giles answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      I’ve only ever done experiments in school with food – in my A-level biology exam we had to put potato wedges (uncooked!) into different % of salt solution and then see how much they changed in weight. It was an experiment about Osmosis and how the water could move from a high water potential to a low water potential 🙂 have you ever done any experiments with food?

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