Iron in Cereal

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acscott8
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Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2022 11:51 am
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Iron in Cereal

Post by acscott8 »

When experimenting with the cereal and magnets and collecting the iron samples, I know you will clearly be able to see which cereal contained the most iron. But how do know, or measure, whether or not it matches what the nutrition label says? Like how are we supposed to know if one little pellet of iron collected is the same as the 25% DV on the label?!
koneill18
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Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2020 8:22 am
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Re: Iron in Cereal

Post by koneill18 »

Hello!

To figure out if the amount of iron you got matches the % DV on the label, you will need a scientific scale that can measure the weight of the iron in milligrams. The "Variations" section at the bottom of the experiment page has a description of how to do this. You can follow this method to calculate how many milligrams of iron there are per gram of cereal. I just did a quick search online, and it looks like the recommended daily value for iron is 18 mg for adults and children over the age of 4. So you can take the weight of the iron you collected, calculate how much there would be in one serving of the cereal, and see what percent of 18 mg that is.That should give you the % DV. You can see if the % DV you calculated matches the % DV on the box.

If you don't have access to a scale, you won't be able to directly compare the amount of iron you get to the % DV on the label. The best you can do is see how the % DV relates to the size of the pellet. So you would expect to get a bigger pellet from a cereal that has 75% DV of iron compared with a cereal that has 25% DV. But you can't confirm the % DV just from the iron pellets that you recover.

I hope that helps! Let me know if you have more questions.
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