The Sweetest Thing

Today another student is trying to separate sugar from its natural form. A dedicated student worked tirelessly to shred sugar beets so that she could use them as the base for her experiment. She then boiled them in water on a hot plate for 10 minutes to get the sugar to go into solution in the water. After we (her and I) tried a variety of methods to filter the mixture of sugar beets and water/sugar solution. We settled on using coffee filters instead of regular filter paper as the regular filter paper kept getting clogged with shredded sugar beets. After filtering the mixture the sugar/water solution was put on a hot plate to boil. We decided a lower temperature was better than the higher as sugar tends to caramelize and become a sticky mess in the bottom of the beaker. As the solution boiled, the water evaporated and the room began to smell like cheap hot dogs.

Now, if you go back over the above paragraph, you will notice the absence of any mention of adding hot dogs, or hot dog extract to the mixture. It has got me completely baffled as to what that smell is. I like cheap hot dogs but is there sugar beets in cheap hot dogs or did we discover the smell that is made when you cook them comes from sugar beets?

Anyway, the procedure is not finished yet and so currently a lukewarm concentrated sugar solution sits in a beaker on my lab desk, patiently waiting for the science lab to open and for this student to come finish her work. This procedure is part of a series of independent experiments that my students have created as a summative project for their Pure Substances and Mixtures unit for Grade 7.

Since switching from cook-book type labs (recipes really) to self-directed student created labs I have noticed a difference in my students. They seem more connected to the science we are doing and that makes me happy. Maybe from this group I will encourage more into the research side of science. Only time will tell, and sadly, I will never know what happens to them. As they graduate from my school they also graduate out of my life. (Sniff, sniff)