This project challenged us to research concepts in chemistry related to art. Throughout this project we would also create an art piece by whatever means we researched. I did spray paint.
Food Project
Food Project Reflection
This project taught me how to make breakfast burritos. I tested multiple different recipes, and discovered a lot of imperfections in my process and ingredients. I unfortunately didn’t plan the experiment well enough – to where it gave me an answer to my question: how do different tortillas store the heat of a burrito? My thought process was something like, “I’m gonna go get a super wide variety of tortillas from City Market, and make some breakfast burritos.” This was a terrible approach. What I should’ve done, was to actually go and find a store that carries a solid variety of tortillas, which I could then experiment with. The cooking part itself was also kind of a disaster. I made all of my ingredients, and got super stressed that the temperature would fall too much – to the point where I wouldn’t have a measurement – so I tried to throw the burritos together as quickly as possible – I had no prior experience with rolling burritos. On my second test, I tried to microwave the burritos, so that my initial temperature would stay up (also a bad idea). This messed up all of my data – which I already didn’t have much of – so I basically had two different experiments. I grilled the last burrito because I thought the chocolate spread would spread out more… you can sense the theme here. My dependent variable was entirely irrelevant to the quality of my food, though my independent variable did have an effect on it. Ultimately, I wanted to learn how to make breakfast burritos, and used this project to do so. Although I did connect with the ideas of heat transfer, and the math of it, it would make no difference in the quality of my burrito. I feel that science and cooking really aren’t so different. Sure, they have some differences. In a lab you can work on a much more molecular level than in cooking; you can edit properties of your food in a lab much better than, say , adding salt to your potatoes while cooking. Though other than that, I see mostly similarities. A scientist experimenting with his different substances, trying to change certain characteristics of them isn’t very different from a cook testing whether or not lemon will taste good on their chinese steamed fish. They’re both trying to figure out what works best. In the case of the scientist, they usually operate on a molecular level, compared to the macroscopular level of the cook.