Science is tasty!

Year 6 conducted a tasty investigation today, looking at how the three states of matter are affected when melting a bar of chocolate. They had to make chocolate rice crispie cakes and observe, describe and record the changes of the states of matter as the process continued.

The first thing that intrigued the class was, “Is chocolate affected by all three states of matter; does chocolate evaporate?” This was an interesting question which they discussed and then came up with an idea on how to investigate. They all agreed that they needed to weigh a block of chocolate, melt it, cool it and then weigh it again.

A problem was then posed for them, how are they going collect the melted chocolate if they just plop it in boiling water? They discussed this and then came up with the idea of putting it in a heat resistant container and then floating that on the boiling water.

They had to weigh the container on accurate digital scales and then weigh it with the block of chocolate in. They then had to subtract this number to find out its weight. It weighed 8g at room temperature. Once left to cool, they reweighed it and worked out that it now weighed 7g, proving that there was some loss due to evaporation.

The rice crispie cake process then allowed them to observe and record the transition through the states of matter and the effect on the particles when melting chocolate. It also proved that science can be tasty!