Chemistry that you can eat, the science behind food and cooking
NCL “scientist-chefs” discuss kitchen science
Why does iodine turn raw bananas dark, but not ripe bananas? How do you determine the vitamin C content of colas? How do you measure acidity of foods using red cabbage juice? NCL chemist, Dr. Magesh Nandagopal, demonstrated experiments to discuss the science behind foods, and showed how common kitchen ingredients could be used as chemical “reagents” to do fun science at home. Dr. Magesh’s talk, “Chemistry you can eat”, on Wednesday, 15th December, was part of NCL’s Outreach lectures that are held once a month at Jawahar Navodaya in Shikrapur. About 90 school students and their teachers attended this talk, and the lecture demonstration held them spellbound for 90 minutes.
This lecture concluded with a spectacular demonstration of preparing ice cream by cooling with liquid nitrogen. The students also got to taste the ice cream made during the talk.
As part of an initiative to reach out to schools, and to excite school children about science and research, NCL is partnering with three schools this year. Scientists from NCL will conduct lecture demonstrations at these schools, targeted at students in the 8th to 10th grade. Each of these modules is based on a topic from the regular school science curriculum – but the objective of the lecture-demonstrations is not to teach the students, but to arouse the curiosity of the students. Therefore, these modules mainly comprise of exciting demonstrations and videos to illustrate properties and applications, and that discuss the history behind the science.
Date – Friday, 31st Dec. 10
School – Hutatma Balveer Shirishkumar School , Shivajinagar
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