Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

So for a science fair experiment, I'm trying to find out the calorie count of broccoli and salmon that have been cooked in different ways, but the problem is as raw samples, they're too moist to catch fire and stay on fire. I suspect I'll have similar problems if I were to use the different cooked samples, so if I were to dry every sample consistently, including the raw ones, should they burn properly? Unfortunately, I'm on a time crunch and I can't spare time to trial and error this, so I was hoping to get a definitive answer here.

My teacher places great importance on the practical application, so I cannot change my foods to a snack food of some sort since my goal is to find the best cooking method. Thanks

Hi teaisyum,

Sounds like an interesting project. There is a similar project here on Science Buddies that may be of interest to you:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... er#summary

Yes, your food samples will burn much better if you dry them. The above project procedure calls for “naturally” dry food items for this reason.

You should weigh each of your food samples before drying. Then dry the samples until the weights stop changing. This procedure should assure consistent drying across all of your samples.

I hope this helps. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman