Exploring Kitchen Science: 30+ Edible Experiments and Kitchen Activities

by The Exploratorium

Open up your fridge and there's science inside! Join the world-famous Exploratorium for 40+ delicious discoveries, including the chemistry of food, cooking, baking, nutrition, and taste.

Did you know that your kitchen is actually a secret laboratory where tons of crazy-cool science goes down every day? That's right and every time you put a pot of something on the stove, mix two ingredients together or nuke something in the microwave, you're actually being a (hungry!) scientist. The Exploratorium's Kitchen Science is your hands-on guide to exploring all the tasty chemistry that goes on all around you and from burning a peanut to understand how calories work to baking a delicious cake with LED candles, from cooking up oobleck as a wild and wacky lesson in matter to making ice cream with liquid nitrogen!

Other contents include:

The Mentos and Diet Coke Explosion
Dancing Raisins
Cornstarch Fireballs
Gummy Bear Growth
Spinach Chromatography
Onionskin Dyes
Marshmallow Wars
Not-So-Nice Cupcakes
Pickling
Yeast Farts
Cabbage Juice pH Indicator
Salt and Olive Oil Lava Lamp

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Childrens

112 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 2014

About the author

The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco whose stated mission is to change the way the world learns. It has been described by the New York Times as the most important science museum to have opened since the mid-20th century, an achievement attributed to "the nature of its exhibits, its wide-ranging influence and its sophisticated teacher training program." Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one," the participatory nature of its exhibits and its self-identification as a center for informal learning has led to it being cited as the prototype for participatory museums around the world.

The Exploratorium was founded by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer and opened in 1969 at the Palace of Fine Arts, its home until January 2, 2013. On April 17, 2013, the Exploratorium reopened at Piers 15 and 17 on San Francisco's Embarcadero. The historic interior and exterior of Pier 15 was renovated extensively prior to the move, and is divided into several galleries mainly separated by content, including the physics of seeing and listening (Light and Sound), Human Behavior, Living Systems, Tinkering (including electricity and magnetism), the Outdoor Gallery, and the Bay Observatory Gallery, which focuses on local environment, weather, and landscape.

Since the museum's founding, over 1,000 participatory exhibits have been created, approximately 600 of which are on the floor at any given time. The exhibit-building workshop space is contained within the museum and is open to view. In addition to the public exhibition space, the Exploratorium has been engaged in the professional development of teachers, science education reform, and the promotion of museums as informal education centers since its founding. Since Oppenheimer's death in 1985, the Exploratorium has expanded into other domains, including its 50,000-page website and two iPad apps on sound and color, and has inspired an international network of participatory museums working to engage the public with general science education. The new Exploratorium building is also working to showcase environmental sustainability efforts as part of its goal to become the largest net-zero museum in the country.

The Exploratorium offers visitors a variety of ways—including exhibits, webcasts, websites and events—to explore and understand the world around them. In 2011, the Exploratorium received the National Science Board 2011 Public Service Science Award for its contributions to public understanding of science and engineering.

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I second the woman who said "Interestingly, the book I'm holding has the same ISBN, but it promises only 30+ experiments and the cover shows a glowing pudding." Am I missing some awesome experiments in my copy? Anyway...
I love how this book takes some very complex topics (like diabetes) and breaks them down in to easy-to-understand terms without being condescending. I also like how the experiments are fun for adults, don't require hard-to-find equipment, and are mostly suitable for single OR multiple children. We can do them as part of our one-on-one time, or they can work together on an experiment while I'm listening for explosions from the other room. ;-) I even learned a few new things from this book!

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of fun stuff. Everything uses food and there are several that result in an edible end product.

Note: This is not the version I read. The one I had from the library looks like the other edition listed here on Goodreads, but in English and hardback. (Exploring Kitchen Science
30+ Edible Experiments & Kitchen Activities)

[Tracey · Rating 2 out of 5]

alternate title (different cover, same ISBN): Exploring kitchen science.

There is good science in here, but if the instructions and title photos on each 2-page spread go together, they should've put the titles on the left rather than the right. Without reading the fine print, there's nothing to visually link these two pages otherwise, and a person flipping through the book (i.e., EVERYONE) is more likely to assume that the instructions for the photographed experiment follow on the next pages, rather than the preceding, facing page. Is it so hard to put the title of the experiment before the instructions?

My other concern is that, aside from ingredients (which I'll assume aren't that difficult to get your hands on these days if you are reasonably near to a somewhat metropolitan area), there are some odd instruments that most households will not have (I'm looking at you, 2 feet of silicone tubing fitted onto a syringe!) and even for more basic experiments, you'll probably want to buy new eyedroppers, etc. for food experiment use only. And adult supervision should probably also be a given.

That said, there are a few things in here that can be easily done at home (or in a science classroom, so worth checking out if you have reasonable supervision, a lack of fear for food coloring stains, and a modest budget for materials.

[Anna Nesterovich]

Interestingly, the book I'm holding has the same ISBN, but it promises only 30+ experiments and the cover shows a glowing pudding :) But never mind that, I see that it has a very low rating. So, as with all recipe books (it is a recipe book, right?), I'll be doing ratings for every recipe first, before averaging for the book.
p. 42 - 4 stars - The Red-Cabbage Reveal - I guess maybe it was a 5-star experiment. We had such a blast doing it!!! I'm taking off a star, because it doesn't mention what exactly in the cabbage makes an indicator. I did my own little research (a quick googling, I mean) and found out that all you need is anthocyanins. Which means in turn that there is no need in smooth-ing a cabbage (a lot of work), you can just wash some black rice in a bit of water and voila!