Exploring Kitchen Science: 30+ Edible Experiments & Kitchen Activities

By Exploratorium

Discover the science that happens in kitchens every day with this fun collection of delicious experiments and amazing activities.

The Exploratorium’s Exploring Kitchen Science is your hands-on guide to exploring all the tasty chemistry that goes on all around you—from burning a peanut to understand how calories work to making blinking rock candies with LEDs inside, from cooking up oobleck as a wild and wacky lesson in matter to making ice cream with dry ice! Watch Mentos and Diet Coke explode, Styrofoam shrink in a pressure cooker, and marshmallows duke it out. Make dyes from onionskins, tangy and yeasty sourdough bread, noodles of fruit, pickles a power source, and glow-in-the-dark Jello. Use cabbage juice as a pH indicator and salt and olive oil as a lava lamp. Whip up tasty treats while you explore all the unexpected science that’s going on inside your very own kitchen. Cook, mix and microwave your way through Exploring Kitchen Science and learn some cool stuff along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781681887654

Book preview

Reviews for Exploring Kitchen Science

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.