Monday, January 21, 2008

Popcorn Pop off Extravaganza Methods!

The data chart I made for the day's experiment. I've got it in a pdf file and as soon as I learn how to upload it and link it, I'll update this post! I had a scary night trying to use a new random 3 column blogskin and I thought this look was gone until I rebuilt the whole thing. One thing at a time...

We weighed out 40 grams of kernels for each type on the kitchen scale. You have to get one of these and a conversion chart. Flour mesaures out in like record time!

Here are all the varieties unpopped.

And all the labeled bowls of unpopped corn.

I-5 is recording his data (with a little help from me he could trace his findings- small spaces and all that)

Dan's the official popper. 1 tbsp of oil was used in the "pop it on the stove in a metal bowl" method. Don't ask. It's all about Alton.


E9 carefully pours the popped corn into a pitcher for official volume measurements. The younger kids recorded how many quarts from the side of the pitcher. However, E9 measured the height of the popcorn in cm and now is tasked with...are you ready for this sports fans?...finding the area of a cylinder!!

A shot of all the popped varieties.

This is a visual representation of our experiment. The results were calculated and I will tell you this much. Though you may not realize it, the store brand isn't the best popcorn out there.

Tomorrow the kids will be graphing some of the results. We will share a graph portraying the winning brand and type AND we'll share some correlations. For example, does kernel size affect how big the corn pops up?

I know. You can hardly wait.

3 comments:

Lynn Hasty said...

Girl, you go ahead on with the popcorn!! That is amazing. I am always impressed with all you have going on. ~:-D

Lynn

Alana - The Mommy said...

Ok, so really, I cannot wait! I check your blog every 10 minutes or so for the results!

You must finish blogging...I know you have nothing else going on, right?

Deb said...

Love this! We bought some white popcorn kernals at the bulk food store last week for the first time. It is sooo much better than the store brand I always buy. Can't wait to see your results.!