MY PBL PROJECT

INTRODUCTION

Glucose and your blood sugar go hand and hand, so knowing how much glucose ( or hidden sugar ) is in the food you eat is very important to you over all wellbeing and health. Not knowing how much sugar you're putting in your body, even from relatively healthy foods like fruits and, veggies, can do a lot of harm. Knowing how much sugar you are putting into your body and what that sugar can do to you is really important, and science has given us a way to find that out.

A scientist at the CDC says, "It’s important to keep your blood sugar levels in your target range as much as possible to help prevent or delay long-term, serious health problems." knowing how to test our blood sugar and which foods affect it the most ( or worst ) can greatly improve our health in the long run. It is especially important to know if you have a disease that effects your blood sugar more than average, like diabetes.

DRIVING QUESTION'S

It draws some questions; Which food(s) will have the highest original sucrose concentration? Which food(s) will have the lowest? Will any foods have no sucrose? Will my results match my hypothesis? How will the sucrose concentration in the different foods affect the glucose concentration at the linear time point? How might this experiment be different from what takes place in the human digestive system? Would more glucose have been made at the linear time point due to other chemical reactions taking place? How will my results compare to the amount of sugar listed for these foods on their packaging?

HYPOTHISIS

Almost every food, weather naturally grown or chemically changed, has sugar in it. Now that is not an inherently bad thing, but knowing how much sugar is in which foods and what that can do to your health is pretty important. I think that even typically healthy foods has a high amount of natural sugar in it, and that it is not a bad thing.

VARIABLE'S

The independent variable's are what changes, which are the different amounts of glucose in the positive controls and different foods that I'm testing. The dependent is what the does amount of sugar means for your body, hypothetically.

PROCEDURE'S

To make the positive controls use water and glucose powder. I labeled six plastic cups: 2%, 1%, 0.5%, 0.25%, 0.125%, and 0.0625%.

Add 4 grams of glucose to 200 mL of water in the cup labeled 2% and stir until the glucose dissolves, then I add 100 mL of water to the other five cups before measuring 100 mL of the 2% solution and add it to the cup labeled 1% to make a 1% solution. I measure 100 mL of the 1% solution and add it to the cup labeled 0.5% to make a 0.5% solution, then I repeat with each new solution. Then I fill an extra cup with ONLY 100 mL water ( no glucose powder ) and label it 0% for the negative control. One at a time I dip a test strip into each cup and pull them out after a couple of seconds.

I label a new cup 10% and fill it cup with 60 mL of water and add 6 grams of sucrose ( sugar ) to the cup of water. I put 15 mL ( 1 Tbsp ) of this solution into a new cup. To make a table recording my data I will be taking glucose readings over time to see how much sucrose has been converted to glucose by the invertase enzyme. Starting at zero, I take glucose readings every 5 minutes for the first 30 minutes, and then every 10 minutes after that. I use a glucose test strip to determine the concentration of glucose in the sucrose solution, like I did in part one.

First, I test the glucose concentration of my foods and then react each with invertase to determine how this changes their glucose concentrations. For each food sample, I take two glucose readings, one before adding the invertase and one after. I label each cup with the food samples I'm testing ( food ) and let them all reach room temperature before testing them. ( Because the activity of an enzyme is affected by temperature, so it is important that all of the test foods are about the same temperature. )

I dilute the samples for foods with high amounts of sugar, foods I use, by using 1/2 tsp. of each sample. To each cup, add 1 Tbsp. ( 15 mL ) of the food and use a glucose test strip to determine the concentration of glucose in each food sample. I put them in the refrigerator and set a timer for the linear time point I determined and add 15 drops of invertase to each food sample, starting with only a few samples at a time to make it easier to manage.

MATERIAL'S

For This Project I Used,

Graduated cylinder, 100 mL (1)
Invertase powder (1 g), makes 25 mL (2)
Glucose powder (30 g) (1)
Urinalysis test strips that measure glucose (at least 60)
Graduated transfer pipettes, 3 mL (4)
Disposable cups, at least 8 oz. (at least 25)
Permanent marker
Knife and spoon
Distilled water, available at most grocery stores
Room-temperature tap water
Kitchen measuring spoons, half-teaspoon and tablespoon
Timer
Sucrose ( table sugar )
Scale
Bottle caps
Foods to test.
Lab notebook

Glucose Powder

Invertase

!!SAFTEY BREAK!!

Always make sure you are using the proper saftey precautions for any science project you do, alone or at school. As you can see in the pictures above, I made sure to wear gloves while handling the chemicals and made sure to put my hair out of the way of harm once I started. Making sure me, and everyone in the classroom stayed safe was my main priority and should always be yours as well. STAY SAFE :))

Percentage Of Positive And Negative Controls

Glucose Measurement's

Sucrose ( sugar ) Measurement's

RESULT'S

First I dilute the glucose powder gradually in order to.

My graph is labeled two green dots, which is when my readings first leveled off, and the linear time point. ( When the chart leveled off divided in half )

Lastly, I am testing the foods. You can see the foods mixed with inverse powder and the equations that go with the data I collected. You can see the equations of each in the last picture to the left next to there particular solution.

% Of Sucrose Converted = Liner Time Point / Original Sucrose Concentration x 100

Original Sucrose Concentration = Liner Point Time / % Of Sucrose Converted x 100

DISSCUSION

On my graph you can see the linear time point I got is 80, which was when it just about leveled out. I explained the equations above, these are those results;

Equation One; Coffee, 173.913. Milk, 666.666. Dip, 824.742. Ritz, 6,201.550. Chips, 80,000.

Equation Two; Coffee, 50,000. Milk, 50,000. Dip, 1,000. Ritz, 5,333.333. Chips, 16,000.

The food that I tested with the highest original sucrose concentration was the coffee, which isn't all that surprising. The food that had the lowest was, also not surprising, was the chips. None of the foods had no sugar, which matches with my hypothesis. The sucrose concentration in the different foods affected the glucose concentration at the linear time point by making the end number higher by the original. This experiment is obviously different from what takes place in the human digestive system, nothing being digested, I am just seeing what foods could affect our blood sugar and glucose. The linear time point I found was a pretty high one, and it was pretty much the peak. Taking time to notice these, which may seem insignificant, things has really helped me understand my project and what I did it for.

This project has taught me a lot about my health and the health of others, it has taught me how serious of an issue this is and how I can possibly help the ones I care about. I can apply this to my own life by knowing how much sugar is in the food I eat and how that could affect me. Something else I would research due to this project is why these things are bad for you, why it affects your blood the way it does. Repeating this project is not something that I think is in my future anywhere, but if it happens I think something I would change would be reading the description of what I'm ordering for the project more carefully, because believe it or not having the wrong test strips will put a pause on the project until amazon delivers the corrected one's.

Data Table

( of when my readings leveled off )

Equations

( two variations of the % of sucrose converted, liner time point, and the original sucrose concentration multiplied by 100 )

APPLICATION AND FURTHER RESEARCH

My project has many aspects in it, at least that's what I think, but the main ones are definitely math and science, obvious on the science part. My project's goal is to find the 'hidden sugar' in foods that I am able to test, and in turn I have found the consequences of what that can do to your body. The science aspect is the project itself ( duh ) and the conclusion I come to, the project is a science project; I have a hypothesis, a conclusion, I am mixing chemicals together to create something, I'm diluting those chemicals, I'm doing all the science things! But, of course, there is another main aspect; math. There is quite a lot of math in the project, in this project and in the research, I did for it. I had to measure how much water went into how much chemicals, and how much that affected what, I had to measure how many grams of glucose powder/ sugar I was putting in the water, and that was a lot of math. I had to be precise in what I did. I've also got graphs and table for all the data I collected. So, this project has many aspects but, like I said, science and math are clearly the main ones.

REAL LIFE CONNECTION'S

Science has done so much for the knowledge of humankind, from figuring out that the earth is round to making cures for sicknesses that otherwise could have had/ have had a huge effect on us, science has saved lives. Science has also helped us figure out the mystery of the human body, now we have a better understanding of how our body's work, how we can keep them healthy, and what's bad for them! Knowing these things have given us a better chance to keep us alive and again, fight sicknesses that not too long ago could have had a much bigger impact on us. we've also been learned how like how to watch for damaging stuff like an unhealthy amount of blood sugar, as what i am doing in my project. Science has helped us identify sicknesses and there causes for many decades, so, like others, sicknesses caused by high blood sugar are now being treated, like diabetes and other serious sicknesses. Our body can also have very unpleasant reactions to it, like: headaches, increased thirst or hunger, frequent urination, severe fatigue, and more. So, this project is just a small example of how science has helped us stay healthy.

REFERENCE'S

RESOURSE LINKS:

Science Buddies Staff. ( 2022, April 9 ). Sucrose & Glucose & Fructose, Oh My! Uncovering Hidden Sugar in Your Food. Retrieved from Science Buddies . Org

Dr. Ananya Mandal, MD. ( 2023, July 4 ) History of Diabetes. Retrieved from History of Diabetes

Michael Bliss. ( 1982, 2021 ) The Discovery of Insulin: Special Centenary Edition. Retrieved from Google/Books

Kristen Gasnick. ( 2023, June 11 ) High Blood Sugar in People Without Diabetes. Retrieved from HealthLine . Com

Fiona C. Babir, and others. ( 2023, Nov 8 ) A Randomized Crossover Study. Retrieved from Bodyweight Exercise Jornal

Manage Blood Sugar. Retrieved from CDC

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, including Computer Science. Retrieved from U.S. Department of Education

RESEARCH PAPER

PBL RESEARCH PAPER

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