Be a Food Scientist

Think about making something as basic as hard candy. The ingredients are simple--sugar, water, and flavoring--yet the changes that occur are chemically amazing. Drop by drop, small portions of the syrup placed in ice water indicate how saturated the solution is becoming, until a "crack" sound occurs when the candy is at hard-crack stage, its most saturated point! The whole process is straightforward yet enthralling, as all good science for kids should be. This kind of cooking activity can also provide students opportunities to observe, describe, calculate, graph, and explain. Each cooking lab was structured as if it were a scientific exploration. Data-gathering techniques, notetaking, hypothesizing, problem solving, and further extension activities were facilitated with a view to providing students with a complete introduction to food as science and to scientific processes. Young researchers had to hypothesize outcomes, follow structured processes, note observations, conjecture causes and effects, and provide evidence for conclusions.