Root Beer Science!

Here is another of my favorite food science programs! It is so much fun and really simple to gather teens together over root beer floats! No pictures this time, but I can email anyone who is interested the set of experiments I put together! I can also provide supply lists to those interested! Also, there will be a link explaining nucleation, which is the reaction that happens when things like sugar or ice cream are added to root beer.

Have teens group together, wash their hands (super important in food science!) Then have them go from station to station of the root beer float science. Setting up in stations is the easiest if there are multiple experiments involved in the food science. They can work in pairs if that is easier. The experiments we highlighted in this food science were vegetable oil and sugar in a cup with root beer, milk in root beer, a root beer float with ice cream added first then root beer and then the other way, and then dropping pennies in root beer to see what will happen. Lastly, everyone got to make a non-experimental root beer float!  (YAY!)

The teens learned a lot from these experiments, such as which way is the best way to make a root beer float without over fizzing and what nucleation is. Food science opens up all of these discussions and makes it easy to talk to the teens about what is happening in these experiments.

Here is the link to nucleation! There is more out there to look at, but this is a good starting place. http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-nucleation.htm
Here are the guys that inspired the root beer float science, but I did not do this because it seemed like a bigger mess than I wanted to deal with. http://www.eepybird.com/featured-video/coke-and-mentos-featured-video/science-of-coke-mentos/
Here is another inspiration for soda science! http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/invisible-soda

Dawn states: never add pennies to root beer floats!

When was the last time you had a root beer float? Comment and let me know!