Chemistry Class Never Tasted So Good

Thanks: Eat N Park

Enzymes, molecules, acids and bases are part of the vocabulary in chemistry class. Coconut cream pie and oreo cream pie are not. On Friday, October 27, however, Mrs. Alaine Frankland worked them into her lesson plans. There were no reports of student complaints.

The students were studying a unit about methods to tell the difference between fast and slow burning calories. The task of the students was to determine the amount of calories in boxed foods that Frankland made available in the classroom. They burned a small sample of the food and used the heat energy released to raise the temperature of water in a can. Next they applied a calculation to determine the calories per gram of food. This procedure is called calorimetry.

Although the students conducted experiments on a wide variety of boxed food that were made available, the coconut and oreo pies donated by Eat N Park were spared undue inspection. There were other plans for them. It was impossible to determine their caloric content because there was no evidence left to examine. The students consumed every single morsel.