Salty Science: Weekly Science Project Idea and Home Science Activity Spotlight

In this week's spotlight: a food science project or family activity that adds a dash of salt to questions about health and nutrition. The salt in your family's table shaker may be iodized because iodine is an important micronutrient that not everyone gets naturally in the foods they eat. To help prevent iodine deficiency, many salts contain added iodine (in the form of iodide). Not all salts are iodized, however. In this pair of projects, families experiment to see which salts contain iodide. The label should tell you if the salt contains iodide, but these projects let families use a visual test to observe the chemical reaction that occurs if iodide is present. Does what you see match what the label tells you?

• Determining Iodide Content of Salt (full Science Buddies Project Idea)
• Salty Science: Is There Iodine in Your Salt? (science activity at Scientific American)