Science week: Inspiration for my project

Day 2

It’s been a few days since I started my science project, every day or so I give it a bit of mix through half of it at and then replenish my pet with another mixture of 1/2 cup each of flour and warm warm water. You really do need make sure you keep your pets fed.

For the first few days I had been using high-grade flour but then made the switch over to wholemeal and the creature has been thriving ever since. It is smelling pretty rank at the moment, kind of like stale baby’s vomit but seems to bubbling away so all is good.

Now you maybe wondering what it is I am up to. So I am going to tell you a little story. Way back in year 12 I had a habit of getting into trouble. Yes I was one of those horrible disengaged students biding my time wondering what it was I was doing at school. One particular afternoon a teacher had located a drink bottle that I had lost a couple of weeks previously. This bottle required a trip to the Deputy Principal’s office as the contents  smelled like alcohol. Bringing alcohol to school  is a bit of a no-no which meant I was in some serious trouble.

Day 3

Except on this occasion I hadn’t actually bought alcohol to school however the teacher was correct in that there was booze in the bottle. How could this be? By leaving a bottle of apple juice in a classroom for a couple of weeks I had inadvertently made alcohol. The puffed out appearance of my drink bottle and the sound of gas being released when the teacher opened the bottle are all tell-tale signs of brewing which in this case was entirely accidental. No one in their right mind would want to drink the stuff and I was let off with a stern talking to about keeping an eye on my possessions.

As an almost-teacher I now realize that this would of been a great teachable moment on the topic of fermentation, the conversion of sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Humans have been using fermentation for thousands of years and it isn’t just alcohol that we produce but a whole range of food including bread, yoghurt and the korean wonder-food kimchi. Right now I’m fermenting something in my jar. I wonder what it is?

Day 4

It’s science week: so start your starter!

It’s specialist week this week and with a choice of social science, technology and science I just had to go for science. Science is fun, science is magic, science starts with a cup of flour?

Photo by author

No I haven’t gone for food tech I’m growing something! I wonder what this goopy mess of flour and warm water is going to grow into? Right now it looks and feels a bit like play dough. I think I’ll leave it in this jar for a day and see what happens…

A jar of flour and water...