EDITORIAL pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Kitchen Chemistry Erica K. Jacobsen* The Dalles, Oregon 97058, United States ABSTRACT: This Especially for High School Teachers article discusses the kitchen as a prime location for the study of science. It is linked with an August 2011 Journal of Chemical Education article where students select a food recipe, adjust variables in its preparation, and collect data for writing a term paper. A book and media review of the play Oxygen is highlighted. KEYWORDS: Elementary/Middle School Science, General Public, High School/Introductory Chemistry, Laboratory Instruction, Inquiry-Based/ Discovery Learning, Multimedia-Based Learning, Food Science FEATURE: Especially for High School Teachers
’ Jones uses the assignment in an undergraduate writing course, but the application to other age levels can be far-reaching. Using a home kitchen, or any nonlaboratory space at a school, can make the chemistry accessible to all and is connected to every student’s life experience. Encouraging students to take a different look at something they eat or drink as a possibility for a self-designed experiment with variables that can be changed is limited only by one’s imagination (and perhaps his or her pantry). What will they come up with? Even a young student could take the simple recipe for a pitcher of Kool-Aid: a cup of sugar, an envelope of unsweetened powdered drink mix, and water, and consider the parts that could be changed, for a link with the idea of concentration, and at a more advanced level, molarity. What if I change the amount of sugar? What if I change the amount of water? How does it taste when I change one of them? Do I like it better? Does the Kool-Aid look different? I am always interested to see what Book and Media Review feature editor Cheryl Baldwin Frech has pulled together for a particular issue. This month’s reviews brought a welcome blast from the past with Kovac’s “Review of Oxygen: University Theater Production of the Play” (DOI: 10.1021/ed200302e). He reviews a DVD version of Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann’s play Oxygen from a University Theater production at the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 2003. I was still living in Madison at that time and had the good fortune to see one of the showings of it live with a few JCE colleagues. Even many years later, the actors’ representations of what the historical figures Lavoisier, his wife, Priestley, and Scheele, may have been like, along with the reenactments of some of the related experiments, all allow a vivid recollection of the play and that time in history. Kovac suggests use of the DVD as a chemistry club or ACS local section
[T]hat year I discovered the secret of every experienced cook: desserts are a cheap trick. People love them even when they’re bad. And so I began to bake, appreciating the alchemy that can turn flour, water, chocolate, and butter into devil’s food cake and make it disappear in a flash.1 I have always appreciated this quote for its suggestion that the everyday kitchen can be a location for science. The term “alchemy” can have a feeling of the mystical about it; indeed, it seems almost magical how ingredients with such disparate properties as flour, water, chocolate, and butter, which we would not necessarily enjoy eating separately, meld so wonderfully into the product that is devil’s food cake. Look deeper and the answer really is—science. Cake is by no means an isolated example, either. I remember back to one of the first Journal of Chemical Education items I stumbled across as an undergraduate, “Making Candy with Enzymes” (DOI: 10.1021/ed061p652.3), that explained the chemistry involved in the process of making a liquid-center, chocolatecovered cherry. I am sure more examples are already springing into your mind. Jones embraces this idea, describing kitchens as his students’ “personal laboratories”, where “Students personally conceive a hypothesis, design and implement experiments, and collect data.... All food items are treated as chemicals and appliances are treated as laboratory equipment when the students present their findings in a professionally written manuscript” (DOI: 10.1021/ed1011184). The experiments revolve around the preparation of various food dishes selected by students. Students consider the variables involved in their recipes, decide how to adjust them, and collect data (Figure 1). For example, one student varied the volume of milk used in a banana smoothie and assessed the viscosity of the resulting drink in each case. Copyright r 2011 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Published: June 20, 2011 1018
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed200359x | J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88, 1018–1019
Journal of Chemical Education
EDITORIAL
Figure 1. Students use their kitchens as real-world laboratories, designing experiments to test the results of changing variables in recipes of their choosing. See Jones, C. D. The Kitchen Is Your Laboratory: A ResearchBased Term-Paper Assignment in a Science Writing Course. J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88; DOI: 10.1021/ed1011184.
meeting program. Its use can be one way to bring chemistry and its history to life.
’ PRECOLLEGE CHEMISTRY FEATURED ARTICLE Abraham, M. R. What Can Be Learned from Laboratory Activities? Revisiting 32 Years of Research. J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88; DOI: 10.1021/ed100774d.
’ AUTHOR INFORMATION Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected].
’ REFERENCES (1) Reichl, R. Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table; Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, 2010; p 75.
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dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed200359x |J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88, 1018–1019
