Melted Chocolate Science Experiment
July 21, 2013
Introduction to Scientific Thought: Science Experiment Project
Introduction
My wife and I love to cook and especially love to make sweet things. Every year around late April or early May, we travel past Marble Falls to Sweet Berry Farms and hand pick strawberries to make our favorite sweet treats. My wife is somewhat of an expert in the making of strawberry jam and I dabble in desserts made with chocolate; strawberries dipped in milk, dark, and white chocolate are my personal favorites. I am not a professionally trained chef and don’t know much about how foods react to and inter-act with each other in a culinary or scientific manner, all I know is I really like to dip things in chocolate. My problem I had was that my chocolates kept burning, even though I was using the same method (double boiling) to melt each type of chocolate. I couldn’t understand why each of them reacted differently to the same method of heating (physical stimuli). I was thinking how cooking is like a science experiment in some ways. For example, you come up with an idea like a new recipe (hypothesis), you test your idea using a very specific set of ingredients, each measured, cooked at specific temperatures, and amounts of time (experiment), to come to a conclusion about whether the idea works or not (conclusion supports Null or Alternative Hypothesis). In my case of melting chocolate, I wondered why it seemed like white, milk, and dark chocolates melted at different temperatures and why white and milk chocolate burned so much easier than dark chocolate? Was it a chemical difference in each type of chocolate or something else that made each chocolate melt at different temperatures? I did some research about chocolate online and found that each chocolate is made from different ingredients and that these variables cause the different melting temperatures in each type of chocolate. White chocolate has the highest level of natural fat derived from animals (non-synthetic
Introduction to Scientific Thought: Science Experiment Project
Introduction
My wife and I love to cook and especially love to make sweet things. Every year around late April or early May, we travel past Marble Falls to Sweet Berry Farms and hand pick strawberries to make our favorite sweet treats. My wife is somewhat of an expert in the making of strawberry jam and I dabble in desserts made with chocolate; strawberries dipped in milk, dark, and white chocolate are my personal favorites. I am not a professionally trained chef and don’t know much about how foods react to and inter-act with each other in a culinary or scientific manner, all I know is I really like to dip things in chocolate. My problem I had was that my chocolates kept burning, even though I was using the same method (double boiling) to melt each type of chocolate. I couldn’t understand why each of them reacted differently to the same method of heating (physical stimuli). I was thinking how cooking is like a science experiment in some ways. For example, you come up with an idea like a new recipe (hypothesis), you test your idea using a very specific set of ingredients, each measured, cooked at specific temperatures, and amounts of time (experiment), to come to a conclusion about whether the idea works or not (conclusion supports Null or Alternative Hypothesis). In my case of melting chocolate, I wondered why it seemed like white, milk, and dark chocolates melted at different temperatures and why white and milk chocolate burned so much easier than dark chocolate? Was it a chemical difference in each type of chocolate or something else that made each chocolate melt at different temperatures? I did some research about chocolate online and found that each chocolate is made from different ingredients and that these variables cause the different melting temperatures in each type of chocolate. White chocolate has the highest level of natural fat derived from animals (non-synthetic