Sour Food

Introduction

What makes food sour? Foods become sour when they receive a high concentration of loose hydrogen atoms. Atoms are tiny particles that make up just about everything we see. They also link to make molecules. Different food have different taste, and every taste has its own amount of hydrogen atoms.

Hypothesis

In this experiment, I will see which foods are most sour.

Materials

The materials I used in the experiment were five different foods, (Lemon juice, vinegar, orange juice, milk, and water), five regular plastic (clear) cups, five bottles, 5 blank food labels, a pen, a cup of dye, and a microscope.

Procedures

First, I emptied each of the five foods into five bottles and labeled each bottle by numbers one to five. Next, I lined up the empty cups right in front of them. Then, I poured five drops of each food from the bottles in each of the empty cups. After that, I identified the cups of what foods I implemented by numbering them matching that to their number bottle they came from. Then, I added a drop of dye to each of the cups. Doing so, each of the foods in the cups changed colors. Next I used a microscope to look into each of the cups too see the hydrogen atoms. Finally I rearranged each cup into in order of highest concentration of loose hydrogen to its lowest.

Data

An illustration of the foods in different numbered cups.

Results

During the dye procedure, I noticed the colors of the foods changed. Looking through the microscope (magnified millions of times), I saw each food’s estimated quantity of hydrogen atoms. Here I found out the most to least sour foods. Most sour was the lemon juice, followed by vinegar, orange juice, milk, and the least was water. The reason why these foods resulted in that order is because of their high concentration. That means the higher amount loose hydrogen atoms with high concentration, the more sour. Oranges and apples are sour because they have an intermediate concentration, while milk and bananas have too few, making it almost not sour at all.

Explanation

1. What are acids and bases?

· Acids are basically substances that donate protons (hydrogen ions, H⁺) to bases. An acid also produces H30⁺ when dissolved in water. Basis is the substances that accept the protons from the acids. They also produce OH- when dissolve in water.

2. What is a molecule?

· A molecule is a combination of two or more atoms.

3. Why is pH important in the ocean?

· pH is important in the ocean because aquatic life needs it. The lower the pH (which can be caused by metals) can be more toxic because they are more soluble.