Chemical Reactions in the Kitchen

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Ariej Al-Banwan

Science

Chemistry One World

        Chemical reactions are all around us. Every day, we experience chemical changes. Most of them occur in the kitchen although we don’t really know it or think about it. These examples are cooking eggs, making cake, cooking rice, burning toast, and baking a potato. However other chemical reactions that take place during everyday life include burning wood and lighting a match. We rely on chemical changes to survive. The clothes we wear and the food we eat are the results of chemical changes. There are millions of chemical changes going on around us. Some are even happening in our body. Plants use energy from the Sun to combine water and carbon dioxide, which react to form sugar and Oxygen. When we eat these plants and breathe in oxygen from the air, the sugar and oxygen react in our cells to produce water, carbon dioxide, and energy. We need the energy from this reaction for our daily activities. 

        The Chemical reaction that I chose to do a report on is frying an egg. The chemical reaction/change taking place is the making of the fried egg. When we fry an egg, we are changing its physical composition. The clear, liquid part of the egg changes color and becomes solid. The cooked egg has properties that are different from the properties of the uncooked egg. This process becomes irreversible and we cannot return the egg back to its previous state. No matter how long we leave a fried egg, the white will never regain its original clear liquid state.

        There are 4 basic factors that can affect the rate of a chemical reaction: Temperature, concentration, surface area and the addition of catalysts. However, what affects frying an egg mostly is temperature and surface area. Temperature affects the rate of the reaction (frying an egg) or the speed in which the egg fries. Egg proteins change when you heat them. Proteins are made of long chains of amino acids. The proteins in an egg are circular proteins. This means that the long protein molecule is twisted and folded and curled up into a more or less circular shape. A set of weak chemical bonds keep the protein curled up tight as it floats gently in the water that surrounds it. When heat is added, those gently floating egg proteins get worked up and begin to bounce around. They crash into the nearby water molecules and they smash into each other. All this smashing breaks the weak bonds that kept the protein curled up. The egg proteins then uncurl and bump into other proteins that have also uncurled. New chemical bonds form from this, but instead of connecting the protein to itself, these bonds connect one protein to another. After smashing and bonding, the single egg proteins are not single anymore. They’ve created a system of interconnected proteins. The water in which the proteins once floated is captured and held in the protein web. When more heat is added, this process works faster and causes the single egg proteins to move quicker. This causes these single egg proteins to uncurl faster and smash into each other quicker. Thus, more collisions occur at a higher temperature. As a result, a reaction under high temperature will have a higher rate of reaction. However, if less heat is added, this process will work slower. The single egg proteins will move about slower and will uncurl up more slowly. This will cause the egg proteins to smash into each other at a slower rate. Therefore, there will be less collision occurring. As a result, a reaction under low temperature will have a lower rate of reaction.

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        Surface area affects the speed in which the egg fries. The surface area of any object controls the rate at which energy can be transferred from one material to another. We can increase the surface area of the liquid egg in two ways; by either increasing the surface of the liquid raw egg or of the pan. We can increase the surface area of the egg by spreading it fully in the pan and not keeping the liquid tight next to each other. By doing this, we will be keeping enough space for egg proteins and molecules to move ...

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