, 24 November 2012
Take part in the big, blind carrot experiment! Please post your results as comments to this post.
Safety: Be careful when using sharp knives. Ask an adult for help. Use clean hands and clean equipment when preparing food.
Carrots are actually the root of a plant, so the carrot’s job is to absorb water and nutrients from the soil as its leaves absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide. When the water and carbon dioxide are combined using the Sun’s light energy during photosynthesis, glucose is formed. The carrot stores this in the root for hard times.
Putting the carrot in the fridge hides it away from the sunlight, while putting it into the bag prevents carbon dioxide from getting in. To stay alive, the leaves absorb the glucose back out of the root, making those carrots less sweet. At least, that’s the idea.
Often in science, an idea sounds good in principle but is difficult to demonstrate as ‘true’. This is a perfect example – how can we show that carrots really do lose sugar if you leave their tops on? Could it be a myth?
Our minds are easily led or tricked by the power of suggestion. If you tell somebody that a carrot with its top removed tastes sweeter, they might expect it to be true. The carrot will then taste sweeter as a result of their mind playing tricks. How can we tell when our mind is playing tricks? Simple; we trick it back!
This experiment is a ‘blind’ test. Your volunteers don’t know which carrot should taste sweeter, and have no clues hinting which bowl might be different, so have no expectations. To be certain that the order makes no difference to their opinion you use a coin to decide which carrot they eat first.
In the end, we still can’t be absolutely certain that our hypothesis is certainly true. However, using a blinded experiment like this, we can be confident our idea is probably a useful one. Based on your results, what do you think? Is it true – or is it a kitchen myth?
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