Looking Back: What Happened? For this experiment I was working with Elyse and Savreen and we made soda that was root beer flavored. Elyse had already made soda once so she was able to really help Savreen and I during the process. After the soda had sat for six days we opened it up hoping it would be carbonated, and unfortunately it wasn't, the soda was flat and very sweet. The reason why our soda turned out this way is because we had inactive yeast, so our soda turned out to be just all flavoring. Looking Beyond: What's the Science? The whole reason our soda didn't carbonate is because of the yeast being inactive, this is what the yeast should have done, if we had gotten a good batch. Yeast is a fungi that is singularly celled, the scientific name is Saccharomyces Cerevisiae which means "sugar eating fungus." Yeast acquires energy from sugar molecules by breaking them down, in order to do this yeast needs oxygen and that is aerobic respiration. Aerobic respiration is "the process of producing cellular energy involving oxygen." If we humans don't have oxygen then we won't be able to survive, but yeast will be able to survive with oxygen and that's a process called anaerobic respiration. It's a metabolic trick yeast does which obtain energy from sugar, this process is also known as fermentation. There are two byproducts that are made from yeast fermentation and they are ethanol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide (bubbles). Looking Inward: Did you get desirable results? I don't think we got desirable results because the yeast was inactive so nothing carbonated and the root beer was insanely sweet. Even though it didn't work out very well we still gave some of the soda to our class mates and teachers so they could give it a taste. I think I performed very well in this activity, I did what I could to help out and I also started the proposal document and worked on it with Savreen and Elyse. Looking Outward: Collaboration and Impact For the experiment I worked with Savreen and Elyse, and I think we worked really well together I had never worked with Elyse before so it was cool to work with someone new. We all contributed to this project and we were really good on staying on task when we needed to get work done, since Elyse had done this before it was really helpful working with her. She had all of the materials we needed so we didn't have to worry about that which was nice. I worked on the proposal alongside Savreen and Elyse, I also helped pour and mix our ingredients, and I was the very first person to try our soda which was really scary because I didn't know how it was going to taste. Looking Forward: What's Next? If I could do this lab again I would want to have better yeast so our soda would actually be carbonated, I would also want to know more about fermentation and yeast before I started. Even though we worked on the proposal and I knew a little bit about what was going on, on a molecular level I wish I knew more. I would for sure work with Savreen and Elyse again, we all get along really well, and we were able to get work done while having fun which always makes everything more enjoyable. There are a few ways we can continue on with this experiment, we could try to make soda again, and we could also look more into yeast and maybe make something else with it like bread. Takeaway: Summary Once we got our proposal signed off, and we had finished some background research we got to work on the actual making of the soda. We started off by dissolving some yeast in a warm cup of water, then in a gallon container we mixed soda extract, sugar, dissolved yeast, and filled the rest of the container up with water. Then we shook up the gallon container a bunch until all of the sugar had dissolved, which took a while because the container was really heavy. Once everything was all shaken up we put the liquid into two separate bottles, and let that sit for six days. After six days we went and opened up both of the bottles the mixture had been in, and it smelled kind of funny. I was scared to try it because it smelled like yeast and at this point we realized it wasn't carbonated at all, but when I tried it wasn't too bad, just really sweet.
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December 2015
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