Maple Syrup Science: Cooking Up Some Candy #makereducation
Yummy new tutorial from Scientific American that covers some chemistry basics!
Have you ever cooked up homemade candy? Maybe from chocolate—or table sugar? Maple syrup is not only deliciously gooey and great on breakfast foods such as pancakes and waffles, it can also amazingly turn into maple candies with a range of textures. For example, it can be made into sticky maple taffy or hard, molded maple sugar candy. Early spring is the time of year when maple producers in North America start to tap their trees and collect the sap to turn it into maple syrup, so it’s a perfect time to explore this tasty, fascinating food. In this science activity, you will investigate how the temperature of heated-up maple syrup affects what types of candies can be made from it.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!