Today I did my biggest experiment, does color affect taste? In the experiment, I poured apple juice into six cups. One third of the apple juice I dyed blue, one third I dyed green and one third I dyed red. I had two volunteers. They were each given three cups, one of each color. The cups were labeled A, B or C. A for blue, B for green and C for red. The volunteers were told to taste each cup with a sip of water in between each sip. They could taste each cup as many times as they liked in the time span of two minutes. Both volunteers liked A the best, and C the least. One of the volunteers said that she thought C was the strongest and B was the mildest. They both thought the the cups tasted very similar. Overall, this experiment was so fun for me and I learned so much from it!

I got all of my materials! I also did three of my experiments. I did gummy bear omosis, observing xylem in celery and observing homgenization. In gummy bear omosis, I left a gummy bear in saltwater, a gummy bear in freshwater, a gummy bear in no water, overnight. The saltwater gummy bear was bigger than the no water gummy bear, but smaller than the freshwater gummy bear. The gummy bears in the water are fizzy on top. The freshwater gummy bear is slimier than the saltwater gummy bear (saltwater gummy bear is stiffer that the freshwater gummy bear). I learned a lot from this experiment, and it was super fun! In my 2nd experiment, observing xylem in celery, I left celery in red water overnight to see the path the water took up into the celery stalk. I noticed that the bottom started to get red, but I did not see anything else until I opened the celery. When I opened the celery there was a thin red line running through it. I really enjoyed this experiment! In observing homogenization, I put a drop of food coloring in milk and touched dish soap adjacent to that. I noticed that the dish soap exploded when I touched the dish soap to it. Overall, I really enjoyed these experiments and learned a lot from them!

Since the last post I have done quite a bit. In my latest research session (earlier today), I made a vocabulary section in my notebook, instead of researching biology. In total, I have the biology definitions of 15 words. These include: omosis, solute, XYLEM, homogenization, solvent, permeable, membrane, emulsify, lipids, organelles, soluble, insoluble, globules, derivatives and steriods. These have helped me understand the experiments better. Meanwhile, I am almost ready to start the experiments. All I need to do is get the stuff I need and I can get started. Some of the experiments involve volunteers, so I have to recruit volunteers, but that shouldn’t be to hard. During the experiments, I will make charts and record my observations in my notebook for each experiment. I will include my observations in my final project. I am extremely excited to start the experiments and will update you continuously over the next week or so!

My Passion Project is still running smoothly. Yesterday I listed all the materials I needed and checked off the ones I already have. On the weekend I need to shop for these things… gummy bears, celery, full fat milk, corn syrup, red cinnamon candies, white sprinkles, apple juice and clear disposable cups. These ingredients are going to be used for different experiments. On the other hand, I have finished researching experiments. I am going to perform 7 experiments. Since I have finished this and am awaiting some ingredients, I am going to do some research on biology itself, and maybe include some facts I learned into my final project. I can’t wait to continue with my project and am excited keep on learning!

My Passion Project is going really well. So far, I have found five or six different experiments to perform, have found four helpful websites, and have sorted out which materials I have and which materials I don’t have. From that I have made a shopping list. I am planning to get the materials sometime this weekend. After that I am pretty much ready to start doing the experiments. One of the things I struggled with was finding the different websites. That halted my research for a bit, but I eventually found some really cool websites to browse. Another thing that was challenging was that the experiments had to be with available materials. Other than those challenges my Passion project has been going smoothly and I can’t wait to try out the experiments!