Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am starting a project with my students where they are picking a "myth to bust" as a twist on a science fair project. One student wants to investigate the myth that "you can cook a lasagna in the dishwasher" . I know this is sort of ridiculous, but I'm more interested in having my students go through the process of designing their own experiments, and reflecting on the process than I am that they ask deep questions. My problem with this approach is I'm not sure they CAN turn a question like this into a testable question. I could use some help in finding a way for my students to turn a myth like "you can cook a lasagna in the dishwasher" into a testable question and identifying the independent and dependent variables with an approach like this. Any thoughts?

Hello and welcome to the forums:

This sounds like a great approach! What you're running into is a common problem with science fair projects - definitions. In this case, the student (with help) needs to define what "cook a lasagna" means. I know you know that with the students you want them to define it, but I would define it as "does the dishwasher get hot enough for long enough to cook something?" I cook lasagna for 30 minutes at 350 F, but one can also cook at lower temperatures for longer periods of time. This is often the case when using a solar oven. You might search out solar oven recipes to see how people derate standard recipes from oven temperatures (such as 350 F) to lower temperatures (such as 200 F).

With regards to this experiment, if you can devise a way to measure the temperature inside the dishwasher during the clean / dry cycles, you can find out how long at what temperatures the dishwasher achieves (on various cleaning cycles / various dishwashers). This might also be a teachable moment about bacteria and its growth / death?

Let us know how this works out!
Best, Keith

Thank you for your response. That helps a lot.
Could the student then just reword the Myth as a question? like, "Can you cook a lasagna in a dishwasher?" or "Does a dishwasher get hot enough, long enough to cook a lasagna?" In terms of defining what she means by "cooked" where would that information be defined in the project?