Important Scientific Findings From My Kitchen

No, no, Science has not discovered that an unmopped floor leads to better overall health, or that a less than sparkling oven produces tastier food, though I am convinced of both and will gladly offer my kitchen towards any experiments that could prove it.

What has been found, scientifically speaking, is that 5th Grade Science Fair Projects are a lot of work!

Cameron chose to experiment with microwave popcorn and how different storage temperatures will affect the final product. Apparently, each kernel of popcorn contains a small amount of water in the center - when that water is heated, it produces steam and pressure, and that's what makes it explode. The water content has to be around 14% - even a tiny percentage difference and you'll get poor quality popcorn. We tried to mess with the water content.

We've been keeping:

Popcorn packets in the freezer - predicting that the drop of water inside the kernel will freeze, expand, and crack the shell, making the kernels unpoppable. Also something about the cold keeping it from heating quickly enough in the exact popping time.

Popcorn packets in the fridge - predicting that the percentage of water inside the kernel would be altered by the low humidity and produce less fluffy popcorn, and again with the cold keeping it from heating enough.

Popcorn packets on the counter - predicting that this would be the perfect spot to store popcorn.
We did a test run, timing an extra bag on how long it took for it to pop perfectly, and then we used that time for all the bags. We are nothing if not scientific.

Cam popped the freezer bags first. We seriously thought it wouldn't even work, that we'd have to cut open the bag to reveal oily, sad, cracked kernels, ruined by their 30+ hours in the freezer. What a great picture that would make for the display board.

Guess what? It popped just fine. Tasted fine too.

We tried the refrigerator samples next, hoping at least for some decreased volume. Those popped up fine as well.

When Cameron popped the counter samples, I was ready to be blown away. For sure these packets would pop up with double the volume, twice the flavor, no old maids, anything.

Amaze me, cool science experiment, amaze me!!!

Nope.

It was pretty much all the same. I would have served any of the popcorn to company.

We measured every batch, counted every unpopped kernel, and did a good handful-size taste test. Any differences were negligible. Seriously.


I think the freezer samples produced 50 or so unpopped kernels and 2 quarts of popcorn, the fridge samples had around thirty unpopped kernels and the same volume, and the counter samples had 20 unpopped kernels and made 2 quarts plus 1 1/2 cups of popcorn.

Big deal.

However, for the sake of the Science Fair, we are making a very big deal about that extra cup and a half of popcorn and how few old maids were left when we wisely stored our popcorn at room temperature.

We're also gonna poke around a little bit more and see if we can prove that the counter samples produced bigger popped kernels.


Please, let them have produced bigger popped kernels. I want to show something significant from this little experiment.

Perhaps I should contact the Pop Weaver Popcorn Company and suggest their new advertising campaign: You can store this stuff anywhere - it'll still pop!

So that was the fun, fast part of the project. Now Cameron has to write up everything, including: a purpose page, research pages, hypothesis page, materials page, procedural page, variables page, data pages, analysis page, and a conclusion page.

He's in fifth grade, remember?

Then there's the display board that needs to be colorful, creative, and charismatic though it cannot contain any actual popcorn. Shoot - we were gonna glue a nice popcorn border around the edges.

It's all due next Thursday.

We're just hoping to be done flossing by then.