Science – Page 3 – Blackbird and Company

Posted on August 10, 2012 by BBCo

Cooking with Teens: The Marshmallow Bake Off!

I’m fascinated by the diversity of recipes.

My good friend recently gave me her recipe for marshmallows. Let’s just say, a certain western cooking and lifestyle magazine published a very different recipe claiming they would be easy and good. So I invited my teenagers into the kitchen and the bake off began!

The tiniest of difference in recipe ingredients, I suspected, would make all the difference, but I kept it neutral, wanting my kids to discover the miracle of chemistry in the process. Thing is, the magazine recipe calls for egg whites and the other is egg white free.

Ultimately the egg whites created a “Son of Flubber” bouncy marshmallow. My friend’s recipe had a thick heavier bite that would do well at the end of a roasting stick and would hold up well in a steaming cup of hot chocolate.

If you want to have some fun making your own yummy mallows for "Give Me S’Mores" here is the recipe for you to try.

Kari’s Marshmallow Recipe

Step 1 ingredients:
– ¾ cups water
– 4 envelopes of unflavored gelatin
– ¼ cup cornstarch
– ¼ cup sifted powdered sugar (don’t skip sifting or you’ll be sorry)
– 2 teaspoons vanilla (or another extract of your choice, think peppermint at Christmas)

Step 2 ingredients:
– 3 cups of granulated sugar
– 1¼ cups of light corn syrup
– ¼ teaspoon salt
– ¾ cup water

Step 1:
Line a 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish with heavy duty foil and brush it with vegetable oil. Mix the powered sugar with the cornstarch in a bowl, then coat the foil dish with it, (you don’t have to use it all). In the bowl of an electric mixer, sprinkle in the water and gelatin and let it sit for about 5 minutes.

Step 2:
In a medium saucepan, combine the granulated sugar, light corn syrup, salt and water. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan, cook until the mixture reaches 240 degrees, and then remove from the heat.

Next, with the mixer on low speed, using the whisk attachment, very carefully pour the hot syrup into the gelatin mixture. When the syrup is incorporated, increase the speed to high and continue beating until stiff peaks form and mixture is cool about 20 to 30 minutes. Then beat in 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Poor the mixture into the prepared pan, smooth with an offset spatula( oiled well), and let stand overnight, uncovered, until firm.

Dust the top with a combination of cocoa powder and powdered sugar, then cut into squares using a sharp knife lightly brushed with oil. Coat the sides of each marshmallow with more of the sugar/cocoa mixture, trying not to eat too many. Enjoy!

– Sara

Posted on September 2, 2011September 6, 2020 by BBCo

Creative Writing and The Periodic Table

A few days ago Søren shared an idea, “am going to write a story using all the letters on the periodic table.”

What in the world? After a summer of focusing on the garden—tilling earth, planting seeds, and harvesting fruit—the periodic table of the elements? But in the end, I realized that Søren’s idea has everything to do with the garden.

Last year I taught chemistry in my guild to a handful of high school students. We read The Periodic Kingdom, and “journeyed through the land of chemical elements” with P.W. Atkins. We watched the periodic table. Yes, watched. This was mad science in action. Chemists from the University of Nottingham have created a short video about each of the 118 elements. Stoichiometry, polarity, and biochemistry entered our discussion, and we concocted reactions in our little make-shift lab, extracted DNA from a variety of sources. But our explorations of the table itself was most amazing. And where was Søren? The little hovering bird was gathering seeds, of course.

So this morning, I woke up, hobbled sleepily into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, and saw our favorite coffee table acquisition from the chemistry class: The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, on the table along with a writer’s toolkit—pen, paper, dictionary.

Søren had an idea and was brave enough to engage the work, even during the last week of summer.

Thanks Leonardo.

Posted on June 16, 2011 by BBCo

Home Ec: Eggs

Summer is a great time to acquire some habits that have been deemed extracurricular, habits that I believe are not supplementary at all, but a vital part of learning.

Making recipes with your children provides them the opportunity to learn basic cooking skills that will serve them the rest of their life and is a perfect time to show them some science.

Home Economics is my passion, so here goes…

To begin, choose a recipe that is simple and delicious. Next, decide what specific science topic the recipe will allow you will explore.

Soooo, let’s make some Sparkling Sugar Kisses! These yummy meringue cookies are easy and fat free. This recipe below is from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion.

Making meringues is the perfect gateway for a little lesson about eggs.

Eggs are composed of the shell, which holds the egg inside. Shells are produced in a range of amazing colors because they come from different breeds. While it is terrific fun to explore shell color, any color will do when it comes to making meringue.

Just inside the shell is the membrane.

When you crack open the egg you will see the yellow yolk sitting inside the albumen.

Out of the shell, fresh eggs stand up taller and firmer on the plate. The white should be thick and stand up around the yolk. The yolk should be firm and high. A less fresh egg will be runny and flat.

The chalaza, it’s the white cord that holds the egg in place inside the shell. There is an air cell between the shell and the membrane that grows larger with age.

Eggs are evaluated by passing them over bright lights where the interior quality can be seen. Grade AA eggs have a firm white and a thick round yolk and perfect shells. Grade A has “reasonably” firm whites and perfect shells. Grade B has thinner whites and some stains on the shells.

Now to the subject of sizing eggs. The size does not refer to the dimensions of an egg or how big it looks. Size tells you the minimum required net weight per dozen eggs. So Jumbo eggs have 30 oz. per dozen, ranging all the way down to Peewee eggs which have 15 oz. per dozen. Most standard recipes call for AA large.

The best thing about eggs is that they are high in protein, vitamins, and minerals.

Now on to the making….

To make a proper meringue you have to do a few things to ensure success.

Always begin with room temperature eggs because when you whip them more air can be incorporated so the volume will be bigger. To warm them fast just place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes.

Make sure the mixing bowl and whisk you will use to whip the whites are clean. Wash them in warm soapy water to degrease. Fat will coat the ends of the egg white’s protein, which greatly diminishes the whites ability to hold air.

Now you are ready to separate the whites from the yolks. Strain them through clean fingers! Most recipes for meringue call for a little salt and cream of tarter to help the molecules of whites hold onto water and air molecules—chemistry in action!

To beat the whites, use an electric mixer or whisk them by hand. Either way the whites go through several stages.

The first stage is a puddle of clear liquid. As you begin to beat, a puddle with foamy air bubbles will emerge. Eventually the whisk begins to leave tracks in the bowl. To test which stage your whites are in simply lift up the beater out of the foam. If a point forms and falls over immediately, you’re looking at soft peak. From here 15 to 20 more strokes will bring you to medium peak, and another 15 to 20 strokes to stiff peaks. Be careful, don’t over beat the meringue because liquid will begin to separate out from the foam and you’ll end up with grainy, lumpy looking whites.

Meringue calls for super fine sugar because it makes a less grainy meringue. To make your own super fine sugar simply give it a good spin in the food processor and the crystals will get super finer!

Make sure not to add the sugar too soon in the beating process. Start adding gradually somewhere between soft and medium peaks.

By the way, this recipe calls for vanilla, but I flavored mine with peppermint extract. You can even crush peppermints to add to the batter. Be creative!

– Sara

Sparkling Sugar Kisses

Yield 2 dozen // Baking temp 250F

• 2 large egg whites

• 1/8 teaspoon salt

• ¼ teaspoon cream of tarter

• ½ cup (31/2oz) sugar, superfine preferred

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, or the extract of your choice

• Coarse sugar

Preheat the oven to 250F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment.

In a large, very clean, nonplastic bowl. Beat the egg whites until they’re foamy, then add the salt and cream of tarter. Add the sugar gradually, continuing to beat until the meringue is thick and glossy, and forms stiff peaks. Beat in the vanilla at the end.

Drop meringue by the tablespoon onto the prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle each with coarse (or colored) sugar. Bake for 1 hour, then turn off the oven and let the kisses cool in the unopened oven (don’t peek!) for 11/2 to 2 hours, or until they’re dry and crisp all the way through. Remove them from the oven and store in an airtight container.

It you use a tablespoon cookie scoop, don’t heap it; level it off; to obtain the correct size and number of cookies. For fancy meringues, pipe them onto a sheet using a pastry bag and the tip of your choice.

Variations: Stir in ½ to ¾ cup mini-morsel chocolate chips after the vanilla.

Posted on June 10, 2011 by BBCo

Folds

“There are several words that sang above the rest in my high school science classes.

From botany, photosynthesis is the one.

From marine biology, Echinodermata and Coelenterata.

From chemistry, stoichiometry.

And, from cellular biology, mitochondria captured my imagination.”

So begins the lesson.

"Mitochondria located in the cytoplasm are little energy factories within the cell. These amazing organelles enable respiration, which allows the cell to move, to divide, and to thrust their unique purpose. Mitochondria can have different shapes depending on the cell type. Because they contain their own DNA, ribosomes and can produce their own protein, mitochondria are only partially dependant upon the host cell."

What I set out to explore with my students is the fact that mitochondria possess a double membrane, an outer, which is smooth, and an inner, which possesses many folds called cristae which exponentially increase membrane surface area.

“All living cells have mitochondria. But it is amazing to consider that typical animal cells have up to 2000 mitochondria… in each cell!”

I wanted to take their imagination on a journey between these folds.

“Folds give mitochondria their unique potential; enable the organelle to be highly productive. Cristae take batches of sugar and oxygen and produce ATP (adenosine triphosphate)—cell food.”

At the beginning of the year, science began by exploring the idea that science and art are uniquely connected.

Leonardo himself reminds us, “All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.”

My hope was to connect the exploration of mitochondria to the unit we had just completed on the human nervous system. We explored the potential of individuality as we explored the brain—human potential, genius. And here another potential to bridge the gap between learning information and sparking individuality presented itself, this time on a cellular level.

“So today, to continue our exploration of mitochondria, we are going to watch a film about origami.”

Yes, origami.

The students gathered round the TV. I popped in the DVD and set out to accomplish some administrative goals.

Not far into the film I overheard the little group letting out amazement. I was not surprised. But soon I witnessed something that caught me off guard. One-by-one individual students from the group ranging from the 5^th through the 11^th grader, got up to grab a stack of paper.

They were folding.

The film did not provide a directive to viewers. This was not a "fold-along" film. These students were engaging in the task spontaneously.

Being inspired is magnificent.

During the next biology workshop I provided instructions and large pre-cut squares of paper for the students to fold a hyperbolic parabola. This, to reinforce the film’s message that even paper has hidden potential.

“Folding paper is work. But your work is not in vain. Your work utilizes a fraction of potential. And the paper will never be the same.”

Dare I say, neither will they?

I think mitochondria is one of those words that will stick.

Posted on February 17, 2011 by BBCo

The Truth About the Color of a Tomato

We live in a colorful world.

It all begins with a never ending profusion of nuclear explosions in our sun. Eight minutes later all that radiation arrives at the earth in the form of electo-magnetic waves. Outside we are engulfed by white light. Thanks to Mr. Newton, who bent light with a prism—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet—we understand that all colors are physically contained in white light. Inside the eye, a curious thing is happening.

So, what color is this tomato?

No, it's really not red, it's black.

If you were holding this tomato in the palm of your hand in a dark cave, it would be black.

Everything on earth is made of atoms which are full of invisible energy. If the energy contained in white light is compatible with the energy of an object, that energy is absorbed by the object. Energy that is not compatible is bounced off the object.

Color.

This tomato is absorbing, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet energy.

The pupil then allows just the right amount of light into the eye to detect precise color. Rods and cones on the retina of the eye pick up the signal and decode the electromagnetic waves via the optic nerve in a mysterious spot at the back of the brain.

And voila, the tomato is red!

– Sara

Posted on December 2, 2010 by BBCo

Observation: One Potato, Two Potato

A couple months ago the boys ran barefoot, shovels in hand eager to pull out the remnants of our summer garden. Last spring we transformed the decorative raised beds that edge our suburban lawn to vegetable patches, set up a compost pile on the strip of land between us and the neighbors, and kept a journal of our progress. At one point my youngest turned to me and remarked, "Happy Winds-day, Piglet," which made me burst out laughing because it truly was a perfectly wonderful blustery day indeed!

As the boys pulled at pesky crab grass, harvested the last of the tomatoes and onions for afternoon salsa, they stumbled on an unexpected treasure. Growing in the midst of the grass were a handful of taller weed-like plants that we decided to pull from the soil. The boys were delighted to discover potatoes beneath the surface in various stages of development. I asked them how they thought potatoes started growing in our garden when we had never planted potatoes? After some thought and discussion they realized that these were volunteer plants that must have come from our rich compost soil.

I photographed the plants, and placed the real thing in plastic bags in the refrigerator for observation research later in the week and ran to the local library for a handful of books on the subject.

Be looking, be flexible, be ready! Sometimes the most unexpected treasures make the most interesting subjects for observation!

Posted on September 29, 2010 by BBCo — 2 Comments

A Closer Look – Pt 1

One morning as students began streaming in under the weight of backpacks popping at the seams. I recognized immediately that I would have to start scheduling time slots so that hours on end were not consumed with Show and Tell. Watching students take turns pulling mysterious objects from backpacks and spilling exuberance into the room made me wonder, "What if sharing can somehow be empowered with purpose beyond the obvious public speaking opportunity?"

Small observations have large consequence. The Earth is heliocentric. Galileo, defending the observations of Copernicus before him, came to realize this truth after careful observations of the sky over time. From botany to astronomy, let's face it, the basis of all science begins with observation.

So at the end of that busy day, as our children contentedly rampaged in the great outdoors, a friend and I punched holes in a stacks of cardstock, rummaged for binders, and with a click of the rings the Observation Journal was born. Show and Tell would never be the same.

The goal of the activity would be simple: Provide the student with an opportunity to slow down, an opportunity in this warp speed culture to discover and ponder the reflections in a spoon, a meandering hermit crab, or the pomegranate’s true color.

The next day we gathered our co-op children together and had them sit in a circle on the floor. We handed each child their own journal and placed a pumpkin in the middle of the group. We were ready to guide them in their very first lesson.

Guiding them to draw, line by line, shape by shape, what they were looking at was just the trick to get them thinking with their eyes. We began with a pumpkin. Together we discovered that the lines on the pumpkin were not parallel, but luscious curves that meet at the top and the bottom of the fruit. We looked again and discovered that those lines were not really lines at all, but grooves. We decided that this particular pumpkin was more oblate than spherical and that was taller than it was wide. The skin was smooth but the stem was prickly.

This is the point where I gave pencils permission to begin sketching, lightly at first, then darker as the image begins to mirror the real thing. When it was time to place watercolor on top of the pencil image, Sara demonstrated how to create the complex pumpkin color that is never really just orange from the paint tin. With orange and yellow with a touch of its compliment, blue, plus a drop of a warm brown for fall she taught the how to make a color puddle sing!

As the children were washing their pumpkin sketches with paintbrushes, the table was set with books about pumpkins for them to discover facts. Out on the porch a galvanized tub was filled to the brim with water ready for dunking and near the sink a space was prepared for pumpkin dissection. As our group moved on to discover a mountain of information about pumpkins through books and hands-on exploration, exclamations galore echoed from one corner of the room to the next, "Pumpkins float!" After separating seeds from gooey web and placing them into by piles of ten, the students counted close one thousand in all. They washed, roasted, and indulged in a homemade snack while quietly writing discoveries in their journal.

The activity transformed sharing from, "This is my teddy bear that lives above my books on the high shelf," to, "This is a centipede I found in the garden, let's go get out our Observation Journal."

Posted on July 22, 2010 by BBCo

The Scientific Method & The Pepper Seed

Taylor was told that a seed from a vegetable purchased at
the market would not produce fruit. He had no in intention of growing a bell
pepper for consumption, only to test what he was told and relish in the fruit
of his labor no matter the outcome.

Scientific Method
A body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.