Glucose in Potato Chips

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crose454
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Glucose in Potato Chips

Post by crose454 »

I liked the testing of glucose levels in different foods experiment that was on the science buddies website. My teacher wanted me to narrow down the types of foods tested to potato chips. How should I do the test. My dad suggested grinding up the chips to a fine almost powder. Mixing a measured amounts of the chip powder with a pre-determined amount of distilled water till it is dissolved or almost dissolved then use the test strips on the mixed liquids. My question to the expert is do you think this process will produce any results? If not, then what is recommended? Secondly, any idea on the measurements that should be used for the chips and water? I understand that negative results are still a result but I am afraid that if I get negative results that the procedures will not be correct.

Logan
jtrobins
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Re: Glucose in Potato Chips

Post by jtrobins »

Logan,

That's great that you found the glucose project interesting; it is the type of project that can be easily changed to experiment with whatever type of food you want to study.

As for your question, your dad is on the right track. You should weigh a certain amount of potato chips (or just use the whole bag and use the weight of the potato chips listed on the bag) and then dissolved it in defined volume of distilled water before testing with the strips. You should also be sure to run the positive and negative control portion of the experiment. This will give you a series of test strips to compare against the test strips you get from the potato chip-water mixture, allowing you to estimate the relative amount of glucose in the potato chips.

Lastly, if you run this experiment with just one type of potato chips (say, Lay's), you may be disappointed with the results. However, if you run the experiment with a variety of potato chips, including one's that are light in color as well as one's that are dark in color (such as Herr's Dark potato chips), the results should be more interesting.

Best of luck, and feel free to post any other questions you may have.

Josh
crose454
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Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:36 pm
Occupation: Student

Re: Glucose in Potato Chips

Post by crose454 »

Thank you for your response
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