Whew! I've been busy and sleepy - but Ami slept 6 hrs last night and now I feel great! And since I have a moment I'll share a little about the experiments we've been doing in the kitchen thanks to Hope's request. Lately we've been looking at acids and bases and these experiments have been so simple and any curious child would love them. But, really why I'm inspired to share them is because in my conversations lately I've learned that many of my friends and family missed out on the super cool jelly egg experiment - and I just don't know how that happened, so you must try it! It is listed below, along with some other cool stuff you may not know - like what really is the difference between baking soda and baking powder???
Here's what we've been up to:
- Drawing a pH scale with acids on one side and bases on the other. We didn't actually do any pH testing, but there's a cool trick to making your own pH paper which includes pickled beet juice :) We mostly talked about how acids taste sour and bases taste bitter, etc...
- baking soda vs. baking powder (baking soda is a base which reacts when an acid such as vinegar is added to it to release Carbon Dioxide and the two work to neutralize eachother....baking powder is baking soda plus an acid which reacts only when a liquid such as water is added to it - hence in cooking if your recipe includes an acid, as in a muffin mix that calls for lemon juice or buttermilk, you would use baking soda, but in the absence of enough acid in your recipe you would need baking powder) Obviously, we poured vinegar into the baking soda and watched it explode as well as pouring water into baking powder and watching and especially listening to all the fuzzy popping (if you do this in a bottle you can put a balloon over the mouth and watch the CO2 blow up the balloon).
- Peel an egg without cooking it - place a raw egg into a glass and cover with white vinegar. Allow it to sit for two or three days. The acidic vinegar will dissolve the calcium in the egg shell, but leave the membrane underneath intact. Therefore, you'll be able to pick up the raw egg with your hands and it will feel like a "jelly egg". It will also be clearish so that you can see the yolk inside. If you "pop" the membrane with a knife, the raw egg will come gushing out.
- Use an acid to slow the enzyme that turns fruit brown - slice an apple, squeeze lemon juice over some of the slices. Place them all on a counter or in the fridge exposed to air. The untreated slices should turn brown before the lemony slices because the acid damages the enzyme molecules that typically speed up the browning process.
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