Hello everyone. I am thinking about interesting things to use in the class room for phase changes in matter. I have one suggestion but I am not really sure how it works so if someone could explain briefly I would appreciate it. I was told that if you shake heavy cream for a certain period of time that it will turn into butter and I just wanted to understand the chemistry behind it. Thank you. Deanna

P.S. any other suggestions would be fine also.

-- Deanna Zapata (deebo_100@yahoo.com), October 24, 2000

Answers

Hi Deanna:

I believe that turning cream into butter would fall more naturally into a mixtures and solutions unit. Cream is a mixture of things, mostly water, butterfat, sugar (lactose), and proteins. Making butter is, if I'm not mistaken, strictly speaking a physical process of separating the fat from the other parts. I'm guessing as to the exact process, but I would think that the physical act of fat globules bumping against each other causes them to grow and clump together, "snowballing" into a large clump during the churning process. I did a quick search on the web but couldn't find anything immediately relevant. I did find a site that mentions the temperature of the butter during churning as it relates to whole the process. Try this site.

Let us know what other info you find, it's a nice idea.

-- Michael Gatton (mg143@aol.com), October 24, 2000.