Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Help! I am using the experiment "Maple Syrup:For pancakes, waffles...and crystal candy?". We did the experiment exactly as the website said but still NO CRYSTALS. We are frustrated and it has a due date in a few days. Is there a specific temperature that the syrup has to be at for the syrup to crystallize? Any other ideas of how to do this but stick to the theme of the experiment? We also don't have any magnifying glasses. Please respond ASAP!!!!! Thank you so much!





-Reilly

Hi Reilly,

The most common causes of failure on this project are due to contaminants in the maple syrup that interfere with crystallization. If the syrup contains acid or if the cooking pot is coated with even a trace of oil, the sucrose crystals won't line up and crystallize as expected.

Don't worry about your results. You have a complete project that you can turn in at this point since you have done the experiment. You can write up your project question, hypothesis, procedure, and results. You can explain the scientific principles involved in crysallization (refer to previous posts). Your result was no crystals, so you can explain what may have happened. If you have time, you can repeat the experiment and change one variable that may have caused the failure to crystallize and see if it makes any difference.

Donna Hardy

Wow, that sounds fantastic! I will try it! Thank you SO MUCH!! The pot may have had oil in it before, and you are right about how it is not a complete failure, I learned that you can't crystallize maple syrup at those temperatures. Thank you again!

Hi,

You can concentrate on your write up and make sure you include information about sucrose and crystallization. Here’s some more background information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar


http://www.nnyagdev.org/maplefactsheets ... Syrup1.pdf

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Donna Hardy