Low-tech Calorimetry

[Kyle]

I write for my high school's newspaper and would like to run a story on the nutrition of our school lunches. From what I've looked up, the food would have to be dried and burned in a bomb calorimeter. At school we use calorimeters with water in them. It seems that bomb calorimeters are far too complicated.

 

Is there any simple way to find the Calorie content of the school food without very expensive equipment or is this experiment not feasible?

[RyanJ]

I write for my high school's newspaper and would like to run a story on the nutrition of our school lunches. From what I've looked up' date=' the food would have to be dried and burned in a bomb calorimeter. At school we use calorimeters with water in them. It seems that bomb calorimeters are far too complicated.

 

Is there any simple way to find the Calorie content of the school food without very expensive equipment or is this experiment not feasible?[/quote']

 

Depends on the accuracy you want, you can get a rough ammount of say a peanut by burning it below a beaker of water and then measuring the temperature change of the water after you have finished. This works quite well, its effective but the results are accurate but not accurate enough for exact experimentation but for your burpouses it may just work

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[rthmjohn]

These sites should work for your purposes:

 

http://www.arborsci.com/CoolStuff/cool4.htm#calorie

 

http://bioweb.usc.edu/courses/2004-fall/documents/bisc150-lab_burningcal.pdf

 

Also, check out Home Science Tools. They've got a site and they sell some nice calorimeters too. I think they might have something you could use.

[DV8 2XL]

You could also work by weight and with standard tables.