Cooking with Chemistry (BEST)

This term in the specialism ‘Cooking with Chemistry’, students have been completing a unit on acids and bases. Students have researched acidic and alkaline foods, learnt how to use indicators to test the pH of different household kitchen substances, and have started to explore different types of acid reactions that occur both in everyday life and in cooking.

Over the past two weeks, students completed a number of science practicals and cooking sessions. These have included:

• Making cheese from scratch and learning about the role that lemon and vinegar plays in the cheese-making process
• Making sour gummy bears and discussing how changing the concentration of acid (and H+ ions!) impacts the degree of sourness
• Creating a pH indicator from red cabbage and testing it on different household items
• Making tingly sherbet and fizzy lemonade to learn about acid-carbonate reactions
• Comparing buttermilk and normal pancakes and discussing how the pH of milk impacts how fluffy our pancakes are

Ms Madeleine Hunter-Smith

BEST Teacher