Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am helping a grade 7 girl with her science fair project. She chose to do test a few different beverages and food items on which would be the best for a person with diabetes to eat when they have low blood sugar. She choose to test honey, we were measuring with the same amount of weight in grams for every drink/food we tested. When we tested the honey nothing happened to the strip, so we diluted it and then it worked, first off why is that? and Then since we diluted the honey (1:10 dilution) do we need to do that for all the other samples we used? But then the sample of diluted honey was not the same weight as the rest of the samples so does that effect results?

Hi Dee77,
From your description, it sounds like during the first test with the honey, (the undiluted version), the result was outside the range of the test strip which was why it was not able to show the result. In regards to the second part of your question, you will now have to multiply the results by the dilution ratio, i.e. let say the diluted result is 1.5, you will need to multiply by 10 in order to get it back into the same scale. Please take a look at the procedure / results for the "mixed fruit drink" at the bottom of this procedure page:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure

Good Luck and please let us know if there's anything else that we can help with.
Willey

Thanks so much for your help

So if the diluted honey tested 2000 or more mg/dl then the result from the undiluted sample would be multiplied by 10 so it would 20,000mg/dl , correct?

Hi Dee77,

Yes, if the honey were diluted by a factor of ten, and you measured 2000 mg/dl, then the undiluted sample would have 10*2000 mg/dl = 20,000 mg/dl. You're on the right track!