For our lab project we are doing a project where we are analyzing antioxidants. The only requirement is that it be something with food, and that we have an actual hypothesis (i.e. don't just make your experiment "I wonder how many antioxidants are in blueberries").

 

I'm trying to be creative. Obviously we could research amounts/strength of antioxidants in different types of fruit, or the effect of cold or age etc., but I want to be more original.

 

The only thing is, we have to propose why we think something will happen, not just collect data.

 

So, for example, we are kind of limited because lets say I want to analyze data about antioxidants in different parts of a plant. Other than taking a stab in the dark, I would have no way of proposing an hypothesis explaining what I expect and why.

 

Suggestions?

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I was thinking about doing something with wine vs. grape juice, but some problems I see with this are:

 

We are all under 21, would a university not let underage students handle wine in a lab?

 

There seem to be a lot of variables to take into account such as making sure the same type of grapes were used for the wine and grape juice, etc.

 

Plus, it seems like anything I try to come up with can already be found with a quick google search. Our scope is limited, and therefore it is difficult to be creative.

It might be interesting to compare the amounts of anti-oxidants in wild vs. domestic varieties of strawberries or blueberries.

Thats a good suggestion, but it's winter and I don't think we can get wild berries right now.

 

I was wondering, do antioxidants react with oxygen (like the oxygen in the air, not ROS)? I was thinking about testing the level of antioxidants of a couple different juices before and after they had sat out for a week exposed to the air.

 

I could even tie this into the grape juice vs wine thing, as grape juice may have more antioxidants to start, but grape juice is exposed to air a lot more than wine.

 

I guess it all hinges on whether flavanoids react with oxygen.