Fun Science Projects: Edible Science Recipes
Rock Candy
Ingredients
· 4 cups of sugar
· 2 cups of water
Boil the water in a saucepan over high heat. Mix in the sugar and bring to another boil, stirring often. Remove the mixture from the stove and carefully pour it into a glass jar. Then cut a string that is about 2/3 as long as the jar’s height. Attach a washer to one end of the string, and tie the other end of the string to a pencil. Dip the string into the jar of sugar water, and then lay it to dry for a few days on a piece of wax paper. In the meantime, cover the jar with a piece of wax paper.
To create the crystals, put the pencil over the mouth of the jar so that the string (and the washer) hang into the sugar solution. Wait a week, and watch your rock candy grow. The rock candy is made of crystals, just like the individual grains of sugar.
Lemon Soda
Ingredients:
· 1 lemon
· Water
· 1 tsp baking soda
· Sugar
Squeeze a lemon to get out as much juice as possible. Add water to the juice until the liquid is doubled. Then stir in a teaspoon of baking soda and watch what happens. The bubbles that form are made of carbon dioxide, a gas that forms when the lemon juice (an acid) and the baking soda (a base) are mixed. Soda manufacturers make soda almost the same way – they mix acids and bases to create a chemical reaction, which forms carbon dioxide bubbles.
Ice Cream
Ingredients:
· 1 Tbl sugar
· 1/2 cup milk
· 1/4 tsp vanilla
· 6 Tbl rock salt
· 1 plastic bag (pint-sized)
· 1 plastic bag (gallon-sized)
· Ice cubes
Fill the gallon-sized bag halfway with ice cubes. Pour rock salt on top. Then put the milk, vanilla, and sugar into the pint-sized bag and seal it. Place the smaller bag inside the larger bag, and close it tightly. Then shake the bag for about five minutes. Remove the inner bag – which now contains ice cream! Learn the science behind this recipe by researching methods of lowering the freezing point of water. Believe it or not, the salt lowers the water’s freezing point, which helps freeze the ice cream!
This post is part of the series: Edible Science Projects
Science projects are even more fun when you can eat them! These edible science projects will help you learn about food science - but don’t forget to enjoy eating the experiments afterwards!
