Description of the activity
Molecular Kitchen is a fun topic, where students create food or drinks that, for example, look special or by the combination of their texture and taste. In order to do so, students need to understand some chemical facts and mechanisms behind the cooking. They also get to know some food additives that are needed to create these special effects which rises the more general question of what food additives are good for (in usual food) and in which way they effect the health of our food. The topic allows to tie the subject chemistry to everyday life experiences like food additives and at the same time experience special effects that stay in mind. The workshops can be used as a starting point for open schooling projects. We plan several projects with schools that have home economics / cooking as a subjects. The projects can for example be about the students making special drinks for their graduation ball or a class experimenting with different gelling mechanisms in the context of food for people with swallowing difficulties. The Lighthouse Activities consisted of two parts. After a short introduction what molecular kitchen is, part A began by students making themselves by making themselves a cup of blue tea and adding first honey and lemon juice and then dry ice. While the students drank their tea, we discussed the role of blue tea as a ph indicator and the characteristics of frozen CO2 (and CO2 as a greenhouse gas). Next, the topic of food additives was introduced. Students studied the ingredients of several products and we discussed questions like “What roles do additives play in our food?”, “Why are food additives sometimes written as a word and sometimes as an E number?” and “Are food additives unhealthy?”. We discussed three additives in greater detail: First Glutamate, which many people think is harmful but actually turned out to be not problematic, and is specially interesting because it comes in many different names (yeast extract,…) and because we have a receptor on our tongues just to detect this single molecule. We also discussed riboflavin (also known as vitamin B2) and alginate since they played an important role in part B. Part B was about spherization – making small spheres filled with liquid, that you can put into drinks. Most students know this from popping boba in bubble tea. The students made spheres filled with non alcoholic blue curacao and put them into tonic. We showed that tonic flouresces blue under UV light, an effect some students know from clubs. We also showed that vitamine B2 floureces yellow under UV
light.
Foto: ICSE
Foto: ICSE
Description of implementation
We tested the workshop in February 2024 with two 8th classes in comprehensive school that is one of our partner schools. The workshop was lead by two employees of ICSE. The chemistry teacher was also present. The workshop was carried out in a classroom and lasted 90 minutes. In the first class we divided the class into two halves, who did part A and part B of the one group.
Outcomes
Students …
- … become more informed consumers regarding food additives: They get a feeling of how food additives are used in general (sometimes needed and completely unproblematic, sometimes not good in big amounts, sometimes used to cover low quality of the food). They have also heard about some specific food additives that are often under discussion.
- … see that science can be used to create fun things.
- … notice that science is all around them, let it be in the supermarket, in the kitchen or in the club.
Final remarks
We are very satisfied with the covered topics and experiments of the workshop. As we implement it more often, we will try to optimize some details to make it a bit less chaotic. 90 minutes was a bit short for everything we covered, so we will try to adapt the time when possible.
