In a modeling matter unit, students in Mrs. Hall and Ms. O’Donnell’s class at Coal City Intermediate School
are taking on the role of being food scientists for a company called Good Food Production, Inc. This is not a real company, but Good Food Production is a business that relies on food scientists to help create and test food products that they sell to their customers.
Good Food Production, Inc. needed the students help to develop a new salad dressing. The salad dressing needed to have balanced flavors and a smooth texture andappearance. Usually, salad dressing starts with oil and vinegar as a base, but students used water as a base for this lab. They tested an assortment of flavor ingredients that can be added to the base salad dressing ingredients such as sugar, citric acid, cumin, and pepper. If a mixture passed the sediment test, students were able to taste test their mixture.
At the end of the lab and through more investigations, students learned that the citric acid and sugar molecules were attracted to the water molecules, but the cumin and pepper molecules were not attracted to the water molecules, which is why they did not pass the sediment test.