Iron Chef Competition

Today we watched the presentations of the other iron 'chef' group lab experiments. Each team had different items depending on what they picked. Each team had to come up with a hypothesis, a procedure, a purpose, and etc. Every two teams were competing with the same ingredients.

We started with the fresh strawberries groups.

Team 1: They used enzymes to digest down strawberries. They tested to see what kind of strawberry would digest the fastest. They dropped both conventional and organic strawberries in amylase, pectinase, and mixtures of the two. They put strawberries in beakers of water, pectinase, amylase and the mixture then measured the displacement. There were a couple of problems however, evaporation was greater in some beakers than others, the marks weren't precise enough, light got into the beakers to cause more evaporation, there weren't enough strawberries, some beakers were different sizes, the measuring tools weren't precise, there was even mold growth, and increased the displacement. Disregarding evaporation, there wasn't any difference in between conventional and organic digestion. They were originally testing to see how conventional and organic food would digest, but there was no visible difference.

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Team 2: This team tested to see which grew more mold (betridus cinerea), conventional or organic strawberries. They made agar to put the strawberries in. They used regular agar and potato dextrin agar. They swabbed the strawberries, opened the petri dish and spread it across the agar. They kept the agar in the incubator for two weeks. Then they stained the petri dish so they could see the mold growth. They looked for gram negative and gram positive microbes in the dishes. Their timing was a bit off, their incubator got turned off for a day, they didn't have a strong microscope and they didn't always wear gloves. If they were to do it again they would wait longer for the fungus to grow.

(Team 2 Moved on to the next round!)

Pesticides

Team 1:  They tested different amount of pesticides to see which affected animal or plant cells more. They used yeast because it acts as an animal cell, they activated for about 10 to 15 minutes, then added sugar and pesticide once every two days for two weeks. The yeast with pesticide died, while the ones with pesticide stayed alive as they added the sugar. An error was that ants got into the classroom. Then they tested against basil to see if the pesticide affected plants. 3 had pesticide, and the one without pesticide. The ones with pesticide started drying out and the leaves started breaking off easily. The pesticide did affect the plants. It was the only one with ta positive increase, the rest had a decrease. They measured by height. The main purpose of the experiment was to see how pesticides affect the food people eat and the animal cells that humans have. The judge felt like there should have been more control groups, and show the change of height and not just the overall height.

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Team 2: Their hypothesis was to see if organic or conventional grew more bacteria after having pesticide put on them. They made agar then got their two materials. They got organic chuck meat and conventional chuck meat and organic and non-organic apples. It lasted two weeks with a total of five collection days. Sometimes there was mold on the agar groups, sometimes there wasn't anything especially in the control groups. Their basic reason for this experiment was that conventional is usually covered in pesticides. Organic is not allowed to have more than .1% pesticide. The incubator was turned off for a day also. The organic chuck was the one that stunk up the room the most. Ants started coming into the room. They weren't able to check the dishes every day. The incubator overheated near the end of the experiment. If they were to do it again they would use more dishes so they had more groups to check for more growth. They would measure more and they would work in a more controlled environment.

(Team 1 Moved on to the next round! )

Sugars

Team 1: This group swabbed sugars to see how bacteria acts after being fed different sugars. The overarching goal was to relate the bacteria growth is like cell growth. They put a different sugar in each petri dish. They wanted to see which one promoted the most cell growth. First, they had to make the agar. They used agar tablets, a hot plate, distilled water, a beaker, and a heat protecting glove. They used bacteria from the back of phones and then observe how the bacteria grew with different sugars. They counted the amount of bacterial colonies and averaged out three counts, then averaged out all the times. They used honey, cane sugar, corn syrup and a control group.

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Team 2: This team used the sugars to test for glucose levels in the human body. They picked out their human subjects. Every core day they would test and monitor blood. They pricked fingers to test blood. They started with a week to see their regular blood sugar level. Each week they tested out a different sugar, from cane sugar to honey to corn syrup. They then found the averages of the sugar. Honey had the highest increase in blood sugar levels. There were some holes in their data. If they were to do it again, they would do it for longer and with more people.

(Team 1  Moved on to the next round! )            

Corn

Team 1:  They began by talking about BPA. It is a chemical found in plastic containers and the inside of cans. BPA would be found in most of the ingredients the group was given. BPA is toxic and can hurt cells. They extracted BPA straight from a plastic water bottle. They worked with the A.P. Chem teacher to do this. BPA has a significant lower melting rate than plastic so they were able to melt out the BPA. They wanted to see differences in between the BPA cells and the control groups. They weren't able to get conclusive results but they learned a lot about how to make an experiment and how to make BPA. BPA is a toxic chemical and the group learned to avoid letting plastic melt that can have BPA because it can cause cancer and other diseases.

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Team 2: They tested to see how bacteria grew on different types of corn. They learned how to use a microscope. Then they learned how to make their own agar. Then they learned how to count colonies electronically. They ran it through a program by masking the image then tracked the amount of colonies. They swabbed bacteria from surfaces then covered the corn with it. They took pictures of them every core day, a total of six days. There were some errors. The colony counting was messed up first. The petri dishes weren't sterilized. The incubator was turned off one day so that skewed the results. The incubator dried up the agar at one point. Frozen corn killed the most bacteria and the conventional corn gathers a lot of bacteria and grows the most. They consider frozen corn to be the best choice for people with autoimmune disorders and its better for the world so that they can eat healthier non-frozen food.

(Team 1  Moved on to the next round!)

Team 1: The first team put teeth into the different drinks. They saw how each of the teeth decayed and grew plaque in the different drinks.

Team 2: Our team, so check out this post to see more.

(Team 2 Moved on to the next round! Yay!)

And after one final round, the winner is the Corn team that melted BPA from plastic. Good job everybody!

Iron Chef Lab: Do Added Sugars Matter?

“Nearly half of Americans, 48%, report drinking at least one glass of soda per day, while 52% say they normally drink no soda. Among those who drink any soda, the average daily amount is 2.6 glasses, with 28% drinking one glass a day, on average, and 20% drinking two or more glasses” (Saad, Lydia, Gallup). This is all despite the fact that soda is full to the brim with added sugars, which are attributed to high blood pressure and heart disease (Corliss, Julie, Harvard Health). Children and young adults are the ones who derive most of their sugar from soda, which is a major concern for the next generation’s health(Saad, Lydia, Gallup). The question is, are added sugars actually worse than naturally occurring sugars such as in fruit and honey? To test this, Iron Chef Lab Group #2 tested to see how yeast, a fungi organism, reacted to added sugars versus natural sugars. Yeast feeds on sugar, and according to prior research of how yeast reacts to sugars, they could test for growth by measuring the amount of carbon they respirate. The stronger the sugar, the more the yeast would grow except with some exceptions such as honey, since it is such a strong sugar (Hewitson, John, Hill, Charles, How does sugar affect yeast growth?). The hypothesis was that yeast requires sugar to survive, but if it is given added sugar, it will not live as well as if it were given natural sugars. Essentially, the added sugars of a soda will have less of an effect than the natural sugars found in fruit drinks or natural sources such as honey.

These are the materials we used in the process of this lab:

50 ml Coca-Cola

50 ml Green Goodness Bolthouse Farms Juice

50 ml Pure Cane Sugar

50 ml Honey

5 beakers with 2000 ml of 110॰ water

8 flasks in ml

4 balloons

5 packets (each being ¼ of an ounce/ 2 ¼ teaspoons) of yeast

pH strips

Measuring tape (in inches)

Labels

The steps we took to make the lab:

1.) Fill all 5 beakers with 200 ml of room temperature water and label each.

2.) Then add 50 ml of coca-cola to beaker #1, add 50 ml of Green Goodness Bolthouse Farms Juice to beaker #2, add 50 ml of Pure Cane Sugar to beaker #3, add 50 ml of Splenda to beaker #4, and 50 ml of Honey in beaker #5.

3.) Add one packet of yeast ( ¼ of an ounce/ 2 ¼ teaspoons) to each balloon. Attach a balloon  to each beaker without letting the yeast drop into the liquid.

4.) Let the yeast drop into the liquid at the same time.  

5.) Observe the beakers every 15 minutes until the results are quantifiable (about 1 to 2 hours).

6.) Record your results by tying the balloons and measuring the diameters of each with a measuring tape.

This link leads to a video of us pouring living yeast into the beakers, all at the same time.

Here is the First Trial Results. Below is a time lapse of the whole experiment:

   

The Second Trial:

Third Trial: 

This is the data table of all the trials we did and what our results were. None of the results were entirely consistent except for the Coca-Cola.

		Amount of CO2 Circumference of Balloon (inch)	Amount of CO2 Circumference of Balloon (inch)	Amount of CO2 Circumference of Balloon (inch)
Type of sugar:	PH Levels	Test 1:	Test 2:	Test 3:
Pure Cane Sugar (mL)	pH 6	12	14.5	17
Honey (mL)	pH 8	12	12	8.5
Coca-Cola	pH 1	11	11	11
Green Goodness Bolthouse Farms Juice (mL)	pH 5	12	12	10.5

• The independent variable, or the x variable, is the different sugars we gave to the yeast; the added sugars in Coca-Cola, the natural sugars in Green Goodness Juice, Pure Cane Sugar and Honey.
• The dependent variable, or Y variable, was determined by the amount of CO2 that was exhaled out by the yeast. To determine this, we measured the circumference of each balloon and the height of the foam in each flask.

To tie loose ends together, the yeast survived the best in pure cane sugar in the control sugars, and the yeast in the juice did better than the yeast in the Coca-Cola. In the control groups, sugar always did better than honey, but that’s because honey is largely concentrated with sugar and too much sugar is bad for the yeast. The Coca-Cola stayed at the same amount of carbon, at an 11 inch circumference. The Green Goodness Juice usually stayed above that range at a 12 inch circumference, other than the final trial. Overall, this means that the most effective was the cane sugar, probably because it fits the perfect conditions for yeast or any organism to easily digest it, but those results weren’t the most impressive. The results that stand out are the Coca-Cola and the Green Goodness Bolthouse Farms Juice. The juice almost always was more effective than the Coca-Cola, which shows that the natural sugars were more beneficial to the yeast than the soda, but it might also be due to the fact that the Coca-Cola had a ph acidity level of 1, an incredibly high acidity. Either way, the results concluded that the natural sugars of the juice were much more beneficial than the added sugars of the soda.

            The hypothesis that Group #2 generated was that the juice would breathe out more carbon. While this isn’t true if you take in account the two controls, it is true when comparing it to the soda, which shows that added sugars are not as beneficial as regular sugars. Also, the are some tweaks that the group could have done to make the experiment better. They kept on running out of certain materials and the replacements weren’t of the same quality. This can be said about the honey, yeast and juice. Yeast also only intakes sugar, while humans find many other benefits to foods with natural sugars because they are found in foods with nutrients that are beneficial for the human body. If they were to do this experiment again, they would use Splenda instead of honey, since it is just too much sugar, and they would get enough materials to last all three trials. The results are somewhat conclusive because the group did three trials to be safe. The soda results were consistent at 11 inches and almost always were under all the other sugars. The honey was the least conclusive, since its sugar content is much higher than the others and they kept on running out of the same type of honey, yet they stayed consistent in two of the trials at 12 inches, the same as the other natural liquid, the juice. If someone were to replicate this experiment, they would get nearly the same results in the drink categories because they were the least likely to change results with each trial. The sugar was merely a control, and the results of that were the most spontaneous since the trials had a range of 12 to 17 inches. All in all, the results of this lab with yeast display that natural sugars, that were not added, are the most beneficial to life forms because of their nutritional content. The American People should note that their sweetness shouldn’t have to be added to their meals, but instead derive from the natural fruits and plants that are given to them from nature, and it will effectively be better for them, even going as far as keeping them from getting heart disease.

Works Cited:

Corliss, Julie. "Eating Too Much Added Sugar Increases the Risk of Dying with Heart Disease - Harvard Health Blog." Harvard Health Blog RSS. N.p., 2015. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

Gallup, Inc. "Nearly Half of Americans Drink Soda Daily." Gallup.com. N.p., 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

"How Does Sugar Affect Yeast Growth?" How Does Sugar Affect Yeast Growth?N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

TED Talk - Mysterious Workings of the Adolescent Brain

Sarah Jayne Blakemore
15 years ago, we considered mental development to happen in the first few years of life. Thanks to MRI, we can take a "snapshot" of the brain at different ages. We can use functional MRI to take a video. This has radically changed how we see brain development. Adolescence is actually the age where major brain development happens. The pre-frontal cortex is much bigger in humans, and does cognitive functions, inhibiting inappropriate behavior, social interaction, self awareness. This goes through a dramatic change in adolescence. Grey matter peaks at the age of puberty. Then it goes down, which means that synapses (connections in the human brain) strengthen and others are thrown out. It fine tunes ideas.
Humans are great at reading body language and translate it into human emotions. The Medial Pre-frontal Cortex, is more active in adolescents than in adults when they make social decisions.
Adolescents have been stereotyped, and there are reasons why:
Risk-taking: Especially in groups, adolescents are more likely to take risks. The Pre-frontal Cortex is still in development, and it stops risks. Another part of the brain is still large, and it rewards risk.
Poor impulse control
Self-consciousness

Guest Speaker - Jennielynn Holmes

Today, a guest speaker named Jennielynn Holmes, director of Shelter and Housing in Sonoma County, came to speak to us about homelessness. She told us about how Sonoma County has a homelessness 3x higher than anywhere else in the country, but we have been steadily decreasing that number. It has gone down 30% in the last few years. Still, about 3,000 people live on the streets every night in Sonoma County. 60% of these people live in Santa Rosa, the others in other large urban areas.
A majority of the homeless population is a lot different than what people assume it's like. A large part of these people are families or veterans. All of these people don't have easy access to what we take for granted. Any number of these people start out with or develop mental health issues, which relates to our mental health unit. It is very difficult for these people to get back up on their feet with these problems, or for them to handle their mental issues if they have to worry about where they will sleep or what they'll eat.
The charity that Holmes works at, Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa, does outreach to give homeless people housing. Holmes says that the best way to counteract homelessness is with housing. N.E.W. also wants to help by providing Homeless Packs, just like Innovation STEM did last year. We will work together to make as many packs as possible with business cards for Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities also takes donations, so even you can help by donation to them.
Create your own homeless packs and help break down the stigma that surrounds homelessness!

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