Fun With Food - Day 3 - Popcorn Science

C and R love to make popcorn, so when I saw this popcorn experiment in The Science Chef  by Joan D'Amico and Karen Eich Drummond, I knew we had to try it.

The purpose of the experiment was to determine whether dry or wet popcorn pops better.

These are the materials we used:
1 1/2 cups unpopped popcorn
cookie sheet
bowls
1 cup water
colander
Whirley Pop stovetop popper (you can use any method to pop the kernels)
oil

This is what we did:
1.  We placed 1/2 cup popcorn on the cookie sheet and left it in a 200 degrees oven for sixty minutes

2.  We placed 1/2 cup popcorn in a bowl with 1 cup water for sixty minutes.

3.  After sixty minutes passed, we drained the popcorn in a colander and removed the kernels from the oven.

4.  We popped three batches of popcorn - the kernels that were in the oven, the wet kernels, and 1/2 cup of kernels that were left unaltered.  To pop the kernels, we used 2 TBSP canola oil for each batch and we popped them in our Whirley Pop stovetop popper (you can pop them however you usually pop your corn).

Before we began, I asked C and R whether they thought the unaltered kernels, oven dried kernels, or wet kernels would produce the greatest amount of popped corn.  They both said the oven dried kernels would produce the most popped corn because it would get hot before popping.

Once all three batches were popped, we examined them to determine which batch produced the greatest amount of popped corn, which batch produced the largest kernels, and which batch tasted the best.

C and R love to record their findings.

Here are the results:

• wet kernels - 11 cups of popped corn, biggest popped kernels, tasted the same as the unaltered
• unaltered kernels - 10 cups of popped corn, tasted the same as the wet
• oven dried kernels - 7 cups of popped corn, smallest popped kernels, not as tasty as the unaltered and wet kernels

The reason for the results:
The soaking process added water to the kernels, and the more water there is, the more steam is created in cooking, making the kernels pop better.

C and R were happy to eat this experiment!

Thanks for the notepads Papa and Grandma!

Stay tuned for my review of this cookbook!

For more science experiments, check out Science Sunday hosted by Adventures in Mommydom.