Bomb calorimetry of cookies
This is how much of a nerd I am. Are you ready?
Tonight I drove out to Der Dutchman for beef jerky replenishments. While I was there I noted that they had some sugar free raisin/date cookies, so I bought a small package to try them (they're kinda bland but all right, I guess).
On the way home as I ate one, I wondered what its caloric content was. This is always a problem with foods that don't have nutrition labels, just ingredient lists.
I actually started having thoughts about how one might go about setting up one's own bomb calorimetry experiment to actually assay the cookie's caloric content via old-school methods (a calorie is a unit of heat, and one calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree celsius...our food calories are actually kilocalories, though). I mean, I was actually thinking about the details. "Hmm, the calorimeter could be some kind of thermal vessel like a ceramic pot, with some tinfoil or even fiberglass insulation, then I'd need a much more accurate thermometer...but could I get the cookie to even burn? It's kind of moist, that might be hard..."
I am a ridiculous person.
Tonight I drove out to Der Dutchman for beef jerky replenishments. While I was there I noted that they had some sugar free raisin/date cookies, so I bought a small package to try them (they're kinda bland but all right, I guess).
On the way home as I ate one, I wondered what its caloric content was. This is always a problem with foods that don't have nutrition labels, just ingredient lists.
I actually started having thoughts about how one might go about setting up one's own bomb calorimetry experiment to actually assay the cookie's caloric content via old-school methods (a calorie is a unit of heat, and one calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree celsius...our food calories are actually kilocalories, though). I mean, I was actually thinking about the details. "Hmm, the calorimeter could be some kind of thermal vessel like a ceramic pot, with some tinfoil or even fiberglass insulation, then I'd need a much more accurate thermometer...but could I get the cookie to even burn? It's kind of moist, that might be hard..."
I am a ridiculous person.