Title: The amount of heat energy given off by certain foods.
Introduction: We decided to conduct this experiment so that we could find the amount of energy that is in certain foods by burning them and measuring the amount of calories released. By doing this I hoped to learn what kinds of foods would be the best to eat to make my diet more efficient. By finding the amount of calories released from the food in the form of heat energy I could find out which foods contained the most potential energy. Before I started the experiment I hypothesized that the peanuts would have the most energy inside of them because they have the most fat in them out of the 4 foods that we used in our experiment (marshmallows, popcorn, peanuts, and cashews). .
Experimental Design:.
Dependent variable: The amount of heat energy given off by selected foods.
Independent variable: The different foods selected for the experiment.
Constants: The room temperature, the pop can, the water was always chilled, the scales we used to weigh the pop can and the food, the amount of water was always 50 ml of chilled water for non-fatty foods (marshmallows) and 100 ml of chilled water for fatty foods (peanuts and cashews), we always used a match to light the splint and never directly put the match under the food, we always used the splint to light the food.
Control: The control for this experiment is a list of results of what the selected foods" average energy really is in professionally done experiments.
Marshmallow: 4.2-5.8 KJ/g.
Peanut: 11-13 KJ/g.
Cashew: 11-13 KJ/g.
Popcorn: 5-8 KJ/g.
Data Table:.
Independent Variable Dependent Variable Control My group results.
The average heat energy given off by the different foods in calories The different foods For easily comparing the scientific results to our results For easy comparison.
2.58 KJ/g Marshmallows 4.2-5.8 KJ/g 2.91 KJ/g.
5.69 KJ/g Popcorn 5-8 KJ/g 9.32 KJ/g.
9.80 KJ/g Peanuts 11-12 KJ/g We didn't do this.
