Popcorn

[mully4235]

Hi. My son is finding out which brand has the least un popped kernels. We have 5 brands and are doing 3 bags per brand. How important is it to keep the time spent in the microwave the same? The first brand we popped burnt if left in longer than 1 min 45 sec. The second brand burnt at 1 min 45 sec. The 3rd brand had barely started popping at the same time which left a LOT of unpopped kernels! Should the time be kept the same for each brand or just stop popping at the recommended so many seconds per pop? Also, in order to get an accurate count of kernels, I have been opening the bags and he has been counting the kernels to start with, then I tape the bags back up and microwave. Is that ok?

[deleted-249560]

Counting the kernels before doing the tests is a great idea - sometimes science gives us jobs that simply aren't pretty. Kudos to you for doing that.

Obviously you can't run an experiment where the test subject burns to a crisp. It would be wonderful in a perfect world if all the brands had the same popping time but it appears that they don't. I can suggest two ways of looking at the alternative:

1) Follow the manufacturer's instructions. They're supposedly written to get the maximum yield out of the product so it's fair to say that "I followed the instructions for brands A, B and C and found unpopped kernels amounting to X, Y and Z." If you do that for several samples of each brand and you knew the number of kernels you started with, you could easily calculate the percentage of unpopped corn on average over the samples.

2) Use a methodology which is consistent across all the corn brands, regardless of the instructions. For instance, decide that you'll stop the test when the popping slows to 1 pop per second or whatever number makes sense to you. Time it accurately and do the same for all samples of all brands. That will avoid burning and for what it's worth you can also then figure out how many edible pieces you get per second.

However you decide to resolve this, be very consistent and as exact as possible. Document and explain the procedures in the writeups.

Howard

[bradleyshanrock-solberg]

Product Science is an area I often judge, and I agree with the idea that in this sort of test "I followed the MFG instructions" is the correct approach.

It is not a fair test if you do not prepare the food the way the package says is correct, when comparing how effective several products are at fully popping their popcorn.

(it would be fine to vary the time if all the popcorn was from one vendor and you wanted to see how time affected the results, but that is not the experiment you described.