Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Energy in Types of Food: I am doing a project similar to this one, calculating the difference from cal amt of 1 food item to the amount released from the calorimeter.I used the formula from science buddies,but got high amounts of calories, like a peanut, 11 calories packaged, and 400 from the calorimeter, same as other food, all are very high in contrast to packaged calories. I did the experiment 4+ times, and the results were about the same. Formula was right. How can 1 peanut create 400 cals? I have to get this done by Monday, Jan 6, and it doesn't make sense I need a explanation for why the calories are high. Is this right? HELP PLZ! All help is greatly appreciated. If you have done this project before, would you please post the results from the calorimeter? I did the experiment on peanuts, marshmallows, and popcorn.

Hello and welcome to the forums:

I found this quote on the project web page:

A calorie (lowercase "c") is actually defined by the heat capacity of water. One calorie is the amount of energy that will raise the temperature of a gram of water by 1°C. When we talk about food energy, we also use the word "Calorie," (note uppercase "C") but it is a different unit. It is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a kilogram (= 1000 grams) of water by 1°C. So a Calorie is the same as 1000 calories. Or, to put it another way, 1 Calorie = 1 kcal. So in this project, for food Calories we will be careful always to use an uppercase "C".

Does that help?
Keith

Keith, thank you so much for that info!!! So is the calories in the experiment the "c" or the"C"? This is a part of the data I got from my experiment:

Peanut, 100 water mass, 1 capacity, 30 after temp, 25 before temp, 500 result, 0.5 before weight,0.00 after weight
The calories on the box was 6 cals a peanut, and I got 500 cals from the formula. Did I calculate it wrong?

I used the formula below:
Qwater = mcΔT

I wonder if I did the formula wrong?!! Thanks for any replies!

Hi:
The formula Q = mcΔT is little c, so your value of 500 is 0.5 C.

Keith

Thank you SOOO much, Keith!!! I was wondering why the results came out so big. So I just divide the calorie amounts I got by 1,000.
Thanks,
TheGiantCookie