Exploring Kitchen Science

Book excerpt: Discover the science that happens in kitchens every day with this fun collection of delicious experiments and amazing activities. The Exploratorium’s Exploring Kitchen Science is your hands-on guide to exploring all the tasty chemistry that goes on all around you—from burning a peanut to understand how calories work to making blinking rock candies with LEDs inside, from cooking up oobleck as a wild and wacky lesson in matter to making ice cream with dry ice! Watch Mentos and Diet Coke explode, Styrofoam shrink in a pressure cooker, and marshmallows duke it out. Make dyes from onionskins, tangy and yeasty sourdough bread, noodles of fruit, pickles a power source, and glow-in-the-dark Jello. Use cabbage juice as a pH indicator and salt and olive oil as a lava lamp. Whip up tasty treats while you explore all the unexpected science that’s going on inside your very own kitchen. Cook, mix and microwave your way through Exploring Kitchen Science and learn some cool stuff along the way.