I hope I make a good grade

My daughter needs a swift kick in the butt. She put off her science project until the very last minute. This is the last week of school and her project was due today. I knew it was this week, just not today. When do I find out it's today? When she was on her floor crying this morning, wailing that she didn't want to go to school. This is so not my little social butterfly.

So I saved the day and let her stay home half a day and get it done. It was actually pretty fun, and I wish we hadn't been quite as rushed. Wanna know what her project was? Read on..If not, I'll post about something else again soon, check back later...

Now that they're gone...Her hypothesis was that popping time effects the number of kernels left in the bag of microwave popcorn. It was proven correct but we learned a few things along the way...

This is looking into the eye of the fire, the popcorn fire. This was intentionally done...I really am a wonderful cook, even if it is just popcorn, see...

Here's what we did (I'll share this easy, yet impressive project)...We bought four different brands of popcorn and popped one bag of each at the minimum recommended time, one bag each until it slowed to two seconds between pops (and documented what that time was), and one bag each at the maximum recommended time. We then recorded how full each bag was, the appearance of the popcorn (if any burned), and counted how many kernels were left.

Something I learned about with this little project is - to never trust the time on the box! Two of them burned at the minimum time recommended. One only popped about ten kernels and we had 512 left unpopped and another was almost perfect.

I won't bore you with all of the gorey details but I will say this...Of the brands Pop Secret, Act II, Orville Redenbacher and a generic, always buy Pop Secret. I now know it cooks up fluffier, tastes better and has the least amount of leftover kernels.