How Much Sugar is in Sugar Cane

The following is a summary of the procedure that a student completed on her own. In her procedure she tried to make sugar from sugar cane. I talked about this experiment in an earlier blog (see below).

The Question
For my experiment I chose to find the amount of water and sugar in 40 grams of sugar cane.

What worked well in my Experiment
Before I could even start my experiment, I needed to find sugar cane. Looking for it in China Town was a good idea. Then when I got the cane, I needed to find a way to shred it (to increase the surface area so contained sugar would dissolve faster). To do this I chopped up the cane into bite sized pieces and then put it in a food processor. This worked great!

What didn’t work well in my Experiment
A couple things went wrong that affected my results. The first thing was the fact that a lot of water was retained in my residue when I filtered and the mass of the water was included in the weight of my residue which made it impossible to find the actual amount of water in 40 grams of sugar cane. The second thing that went wrong was I forgot to measure the beaker that held the pure sugar when it was empty. Since the masses of different beakers vary, when I weighed the beaker filled with sugar I had to subtract the average mass of a 400 ml beaker instead of the mass of the beaker I was using.
Another thing that didn’t go well was that I burnt my sugar due to evaporating my water at too high a temperature.

What I would change if I did this again

If I did my experiment again I would make sure I measured my residue when it was dry and again when it was wet. I would also make sure to remember which beaker weighed what and if I had measured them all while they were empty. The final thing I would change was the temperature at which I evaporated all my water. Instead of 100 °C, I would evaporate at 70 °C or 60°C.

Here is the new and improved procedure for determining the amount of sugar and water in sugar cane:

1. Safety goggles over eyes.
2. Collect all apparatus needed.
3. Measure 200 ml of water using a graduated cylinder
4. Weigh the empty 400 ml beaker
5. Put water in the 400 ml beaker and place on the hot plate. Turn setting to 100 ° C.
6. Weigh 40 grams of pre-shredded sugar cane using a triple-beam balance, a 400 ml beaker and the Dilyara Process.
7. Add the 40 grams of pre-shredded sugar cane to the 400 ml beaker of water. Weigh mixture.
8. Stir gently for 2-3 minutes with a glass rod.
9. Filter mixture using a retort stand, a retort ring, a funnel, filter paper and 400 ml catch beaker.
10. Weigh residue when it’s wet and then later when it’s dry. Subtract the two masses. (Use the Dilyara process when weighing)
11. Collect filtrate and put back on the hot plate. Turn setting to six. Leave it there until all water has evaporated and turn off the hot plate.
12. Collect remaining sugar.
13. Measure using a triple-beam balance and Dilyara process.
14. You now have the amount of sugar 40 grams of sugar cane contains. Take the weight of the mixture in step 6 and subtract the amount of original water, the difference between the dry and wet residue and the mass of the 400 ml beaker from this amount.
15. Then subtract the amount of sugar and the mass of the dry residue from this amount. Your answer is the amount of water in 40 grams of sugar cane.
15. Clean up and put away safety goggles.


Materials
-triple-beam balance
-safety goggles
-graduated cylinder
-400 ml beakers x 3
-hot plate
-40 grams pre-shredded sugar cane
-glass rod
-retort stand
-retort ring
-funnel
-filter paper

Conclusion
A 40 gram sample of sugar cane contains about 3 grams of sugar, about 1 gram of water and the rest is fibers.