Chemistry of Food Fair
The purpose of this project was to help us see the relationship that chemistry has with the world through the example of foods and cooking. We began by doing some research on a certain topic relating to cooking and chemistry and creating an exhibit proposal about it, then we would all anonymously vote on the exhibits we thought were the best. My exhibit proposal was one of the ones that was selected and I was the project manager for it. It was about how salt was used in preparation and preservation over the course of history, and it would have an example for each and a demonstration on how to preserve your food by using salt. I learned about the importance of salt in the past and its many uses, but most of all, I learned how cooking itself is just a bunch of compounds like salt put together and put through different chemical reactions. And I honestly feel like I now understand how chemistry applies to everyday things.
Written Reflection
I was the project manager for my exhibit, Halt, Let’s Talk About Salt!, so I had already planned out the topics we were going to present and the materials we would need. My group members were Meagan Herrera and Rafael Uribe. I believe I was very flexible in planning out the group roles, I would asked my group if they believed we needed to change anything, and I told them that if they didn't like the research topics they were assigned that they could change them as long as it was still related to salt. We each had two specific topics to research and materials we needed to bring in on the day of exhibition. Everyone seemed like they were comfortable with the work they had to do.
But despite the even distribution of the work, the effort put in was definitely not evenly distributed. Meagan did all she was assigned, while Rafael didn’t bring in his materials and put little effort into researching and writing a speech about his topics. I brought all of my ass materials and adequately researched my topic and I planned and made the entire tri-fold by myself. I felt like even though I had a set plan that seemed balanced out, I ended up doing most of the work. I feel like this could have been avoided if we started working on the project earlier and took some time to clarify what needed to done by whom, by when, and what the requirements were. I mostly communicated with them through a shared folder that had our plan, photos, and everything else, because during class time we would have to focus on other things. I wish they would have asked me for help though, because instead of us working together to figure something out, they spent the whole class time just having written a few sentences for their topic and doing nothing else.
Presenting my exhibit to peers allowed me to easily memorize everything I researched and their surprised faces also reminded of how I underestimated the value of salt. I had already known that salt is one of the most abundant resources, but I didn’t know that there was so many different types of salt because a salt is just a bond between a metal and a nonmetal. I had never understood why salt was a form of money, a reason to go to war, and a symbol in religion and fairy tales, but once I started researching how salt was/is used as a preservative and seasoning in foods, and how it’s a necessary nutrient for most living things including humans, I understood why it was so revered. It made me more interested in seeing how other cooking chemicals like baking soda and vinegar were first used and how valuable they were considered.
This project helped me understand how chemistry connects to everything in some way. I had seen salt as a common household object and nothing else, but in reality it’s just one of the many salts created that can be used for something as simple as seasoning food to preserving bodies for centuries. I found strange how something so easily found and made up of such common elements was used as money and was even the cause of some wars. I've realized that cooking itself is just a bunch of compounds put together and put through different chemical reactions. This has helped me understand that chemistry isn't such an irrelevant and boring topic as I had originally thought it was and it plays a major part in the making of everything. I felt like this project helped me grow as a chemist and I’m glad that I could understand chemistry a bit better after this project.