POPCORN POPPED IN DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES
Cade Spector
Cary Academy
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this experiment was to see which type of popcorn kernel brand popped the
most popcorn. This data would be needed to see which type of popcorn is the most reliable when it is
being made for big events or groups. In the experiment, 100 popcorn kernels for every brand of
popcorn were counted and placed in a brown paper bag. The paper bags were put in a microwave
separately from the other brands, and were cooked for 90 sec. After the popcorn finished popping the
popcorn kernels unpopped were counted and subtracted from 100 to find the total kernels popped.
The Pop secret popcorn ended up popping the most but it Orville brand popcorn was only a few
kernels below and it could have been possible for the two popcorn kernels to have the exact same
amount of kernels popped because the brands are made of equal quality. They are both name brand
popcorn unlike the yellow popcorn that popped the least.
INTRODUCTION
1: Popcorn kernels are made out of several layers. Popcorn kernels have a hard outer shell
that holds in the popcorns starchy white center and liquid content. The layers of popcorn have names.
The outer shell is the pericarp, which protects the stuff inside. The starchy white interior is called the
endosperm. The moist part is called the
germ and the tip or tips are called the tip
cap. 13% of a popcorn kernel is the
moist part in the center. Every popcorn
kernel has a certain amount of oil and
moisture inside of it. Unlike most grains,
popcorn has a hard outer shell
that’s impervious to moisture. The starch
is hard and dense. Popcorn kernels are
made out of the same thing, but there
are two different types of kernels that
look different. Rice popcorn has a
pointed angle at each end of the kernel
and “pearl popcorn” is circular. Kernels
of popcorn can be cooked in different
ways, through popcorn machines,
Figure 1 layers of a popcorn kernel
microwave or stove. When the popcorn
kernels are heated up to about 204 C the
moist, wet interior begins to evaporate and processed into steam, which is a gas. A gas needs more
space than a liquid, so when the liquid would have just enough space, the gas does not and tries to
expand. The expanding of the gas releases pressure inside the shell. When the pressure is great
enough, the pressure breaks the shell trying to get out, and then the popcorn explodes. When it
explodes it turns into a fluffy morsel, of popcorn.
2: A former Cary Academy student, Kristin Andrejko did an experiment on popcorn. Her
experiments were if soaked popcorn, would the popping efficiency still be the same if soaked for
different times and her other experiment was if yellow or white popcorn pop different amounts of
popcorn. The water experiments results showed that when the popcorn was put in water it didn’t pop
with the same efficiency. The reason the kernels wouldn’t pop was because the current moisture in
the popcorn, which is a 13-14% of the kernel gets raised due to the moisture added by the water. 1314% moisture is an exact number because that is how much water can be evaporated into steam
when the popcorn is heated up. When the moisture of the water moistens the entire kernel and raises
the percentage, the heat can’t turn all of the water into steam, so it leaves the kernel unpopped.
These results show that when the kernel is modified, it could affect the kernel. This will help form the
hypothesis about the experiment with frozen kernels. Her other experiment which compared yellow
and white kernels results
3: Matter is what everything in the world is made up of that takes up space and has mass. The
lowest form of matter is an atom. An atom is a very small form of matter that makes up everything
and is pretty impossible to split. An atom cannot be split by force, chemicals or anything, except
nuclear reaction. An atom is 1/25,000,000,000,000 in (0.000000000001 mm) diameter, so good luck
finding one! Matter is so small that it is impossible to even see it. Scientists have done a ton of
science and it was determined that there are about
133,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms that are in the
world. Other types of matter are liquid, gas and solids, which also take up space, which defines it as
matter. Solids are confirmed as something that has a structural form and can’t change its volume or
mass. A solid, unlike a liquid cannot be contained inside of a container. A liquid is any substance
that’s form and mas can change due to the condition. A gas is an airlike fluid substance that can
expand to any open space available and is regardless of its quanity.
4: Popcorn has been around for a while, over thousands of years. It was founded by
Guatemalans. Archeologists found popcorn being around from 3600 BCE in Mexico, and even early
like 4700 BCE in Peru. When the English came to America, they learned about popcorn from the
Native Americans who were already inhabited. Popcorn was most used during the Great Depression.
While most businesses fell, popcorn began to thrive while being at the cost of 5-10 cents a bag,
making it affordable during the money crisis. It began to become a source of income for many
struggling farmers. They put their attention to making corn for popping and it became a very important
crop during the time Again it began big during World War 2 when sugar candies were diminished due
to sugar rations. Due to this, people started eating almost 3 times the amount of popcorn that they
used to because instead of candy, they eat popcorn.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Pop secret popcorn, Yellow Popcorn, Orville Popcorn, beaker, brown paper bags, water, and a
microwave were used in this experiment.
100 popcorn kernels were counted out of three different brands of popcorn. The popcorn was then
counted by pouring popcorn into a single beaker, and then 100 popcorn kernels were counted out of
that. The 100 counted popcorn kernels were poured into a paper bag, rolled up and placed in the
microwave for 90 sec. The popped popcorn was placed in a beaker and the kernels left in the bag
were subtracted from 100 and that shows how much popcorn popped. The routine was repeated
three times for brand and then the average was found. The average popcorn popped was recorded
for the three different brands and were compared to see which brand popped the most popcorn.
100 Pop secret popcorn kernels were placed in a brown paper bag, which was placed in the
microwave for different amounts of time. The times that the popcorn was cooked for were 0 sec, 15
sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 60 sec, and 90 sec. When the popcorn was done, the popcorn was taken out
and the amount of popcorn that was popped was recorded for each amount of time. After three runs
for each of the times the average was found and that data was then recorded.
100 Yellow popcorn kernels were placed in a paper and then in a microwave for different amounts of
time. The times the popcorn was cooked for were 0 sec, 15 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 60 sec, and 90 sec.
The popcorn kernels were cooked for each of the times, and when the popcorn was done popping,
the number of popped popcorn were then recorded and after three try’s at each of the times, the
average was found and recorded. The averages were compared with the other three brands that
were tried in the same experiment.
100 Orville Popcorn kernels were placed in a paper bag after being counted, and placed in a
microwave for different amounts of time. The times the popcorn was cooked for were 0 sec, 15 sec,
30 sec, 45 sec, 60 sec, and 90 sec three times each. When the Orville popcorn was finished popping,
the amount of popcorn kernels popped where recorded. After three trials of each of the times, the
numbers were averaged and recorded. When recorded, the average of each of the times was
compared with three other brands doing the same experiment.
Pop secret popcorn was placed in the freezer to see if frozen popcorn still pops. The popcorn was in
the freezer for different amounts of time to see if the coldness of the popcorn mattered. Popcorn was
in the freezer overnight, for 760 min, 30 min, 10 min and 0 min. The frozen amount of popcorn was
then counted into a beaker, poured into a bag and then was placed in the microwave for 90 sec. The
popped popcorn in the bag after the 90 sec was counted 3 times for each of the different times. The 3
amounts of popcorn popped were then averaged. The data found was recorded. The recorded data
was compared with three other brands doing the same experiment
In a beaker, 50 ml of water was mixed with 10 drops of red food coloring. Then 20 counted pieces of
Orville Popcorn, Yellow Popcorn, and Pop Secret popcorn were soaked in the red food coloring
mixture for 30 sec. The popcorn kernels were placed in a paper bag and cooked in the microwave.
When the popcorn kernels were done cooking, the darkness of the red spots on the popcorn was
recorded as well as the amount of the popcorn covered with red were recorded, and with both of the
records, a 1-10 scale was made for each of the brands.
A beaker was filled with 200 ml of water. 100 Pop Secret popcorn kernels were then soaked in the
water for different amounts of time. They were soaked for, and dried in a paper towel for 0 sec, 10
sec, 20 sec, and 30 sec. The wet but not soaked kernels were put in a paper bag and placed in the
microwave
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
100
90
Kernels Popped
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Orville
Yellow Popcorn
Brand of popcorn
Figure 2 Popping of different brands
Pop secret
The reason that Pop Secret Popcorn popped the most is because it is a name brand and name
brands are usually better. They are better because it comes from a company that works on popcorn
primarily which would make it so the quality of the popcorn would be better than most. The Yellow
popcorn is generic popcorn so the popcorn made would be of less quality. Orville Popcorn is also a
name brand and is a good popcorn brand but it is not as good as the Pop Secret brand.
100
90
% Popcorn popped
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
time in freezer (min)
Figure 3: Frozen popcorn popping
The Pop Secret popcorn brand used did not seem to be effected by the amount of time it is in the
freezer. The reason that frozen popcorn still popped is because the liquid content in the kernel was
not frozen over, like was suspected to happen, making liquid to still go through the process of turning
into steam and busting open the popcorn.
10
9
8
depth of red
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
pop secret
yellow
orville
Popcorn type
Figure 4: Red food colored popcorn
It seems that when red food coloring was added to the different popcorn brands, the Orville brand
became the darkest shade of red. This happened because the Orville popcorn, when popped is the
fluffiest popcorn, so when the red coloring is on the popcorn, the food coloring can go into the fluffy
popcorn and make it redder by soaking into it more.
100
90
popcorn popped
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0
100
200
300
400
500
water in beaker (ml)
Figure 5: Water in the microwave
When a beaker full of different amounts of water was placed in the microwave with Pop Secret
popcorn, the popcorn didn’t pop as much. The more water added the less popcorn popped. This
result was shocking because when something is in a microwave, the microwave uses the water to
heat up what is in the microwave. What happened when water was with the popcorn was that the
heat of the microwave went to the water, and ended up heating the water and not the popcorn. There
was also too much water in the beaker to help.
100
90
Popcorn popped
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
time in water (sec)
Figure 6: Cooking wet popcorn
When popcorn that was soaked in water for different amounts of time (but then dried) was put in the
microwave it seemed to affect the amount of popcorn popped. When there is no water, it popped
about 88 pieces of popcorn, and when popcorn was soaked for a small amount of time it popped the
least, and when it was in the water for greater amounts of time it seemed to pop more. The reason
that this is so is because when the popcorn is in the water for a little bit, it is just wet, and is just not
enough water to help the microwave heat up the food better. When a little bit more water is added, it
gets a little bit more water, not too much water; it helps the microwave heat up the kernels.
Time(sec)
Pop Secret popcorn
Yellow popcorn
popped
popped
0
0
0
15
0
0
30
0
0
45
42
4
60
53
20
90
82
60
Figure 7 Chart of different brands popping for different times
Orville popcorn
popped
0
0
0
57
68
84
Three different brands were put in the same experiment and compared. The Yellow popcorn popped
the least because it is generic popcorn where not much work is put into which makes it a low class
brand of popcorn. The Orville popcorn popped the most for all of the times but it could be said that if
this experiment was done a few more times than Pop Secret could be popping more. Orville is
popcorn company that focuses’ most of their work on making good, elegant popcorn. The Pop Secret
popcorn is a good brand of popcorn, and pops about the same as the Orville brand. It is a better type
of popcorn than the yellow popcorn though, because Yellow popcorn is a generic brand, and Pop
Secret is a non-generic company. Orville makes higher ranked popcorn in the ways of making
popcorn. All of the popcorn types popped more when more heat was added as well.
CONCLUSION
In the experiments that were done, it was determined that the most reliable brand of popcorn is Pop
Secret when it comes to the abundance of popcorn popped, but Orville if fluffy popcorn is wanted.
These experiments show that popcorn kernels science to popping can be modified to make it pop
more or less due to adding water, freezing or soaking the popcorn. The data found by this could be
used if popcorn was being served at a party and there were allot of people so the efficiency of the
popcorn popped was needed, using Pop Secret popcorn and adding allot of water to the kernels and
drying them.
CITATIONS
Andrejko, Kristin THE STUDY OF HOW SOAKING POPCORN KERNELS IN DIFFERENT
AMOUNTS OF WATER AFFECTS THE POPPING EFFICIENCY Cary Academy, 2010.
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Facts At Your Fingertips.: Introducing Chemistry Atoms, Molecules, And States Of Matter. Tucson,
Az: Brown Bear Limited, 2010. Print.
Friedhoffer, Robert, and Joe Hosking. Science Lab in a Supermarket. New York: Franklin Watts,
1998. Print.
Gupta, Rachna. Buzzle.com. Buzzle.com, 17 Mar. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2013.
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