Thursday, June 28, 2012

LB: Introduction

LB: Introduction

This is the link to the proposal for this project and this is the link for the brainstorming excel sheet. I will post tagged updates, most relevantly#lab book, as the experiment progresses. An explanation of the underlined words, usually science processes, can be found in the proposal, as well as at the bottom of this post. Do note that this journal is picture heavy, and will take time to load. 

The general structure is this: procedure, then results and discussion for each trial, interspersed with one-offs like the glossary. That said, the results post, especially for the earlier trials are going to be simple, tables and bar charts, because I don't think its worth the effort to analysis in-depth data that is known to be inaccurate. At the most, if will be to try out a particular method before using it on the final data.

The back story is that while cooking glutinous rice balls (GRBs), aka tangyuan, I've noticed that they sink initially, then float to the top as they are cooked. It's been niggling at me as to why, so when I was told to do a science project I naturally thought of this.

GBR in ginger sugar water with black sesame filing
GRBs do come in many flavours and soups, but I will be using plain flour, water and minimum food colouring, so as to distinguish samples to reduce the number of variables involved.


P.S.  
No:
Term
Meaning
      1.
Gelatinisation 
When starches are heated with water in cooking, individual grains absorb water and expand. This happens around 55 to 80°C, is irreversible and also increases the volume of the food,
      2.
Upthrust
When an object is submerged in water, an upwards force called upthrust will acting on it and the amount of upthrust is proportional to the weight of water displaced. Hence if that object expands and displaces more water, more force will be pushing it up than before. 
      3.
Surface area to volume ratio
When an object expands, its surface area also becomes larger and surface area to volume ratio smaller. An increase in surface area is proportional to how efficiently it absorbs heat. Out of two foods with the same volume and mass but different shape, the food with the larger surface area will be cooked first.

  1.  
Glutinous rice
Contains more amylopectin than non-glutinous rice, exhibits properties such as an increase in viscosity ("stretchy/stickier...") and translucency after cooking. Becomes less dense.

  1.  
Correlation
Statistical relationship between two sets of data; does not imply causation

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