Chocolate Science Fair Projects

There is nothing more enticing than chocolate science fair projects. However, many students fail to take full advantage of the universal appeal of chocolate when designing their visual displays. Below are five ideas for winning over the judges using the best of what chocolate has to offer.

The first way that you can draw judges to your chocolate science fair projects is to set up a chocolate smelling station. The aroma of chocolate produces nearly as many chemical reactions in your brain as tasting it does. Depending on the focus of your food science experiments, you may want to set up smelling dishes that demonstrate how the aroma of chocolate varies depending on what form it is in. For example, you can have natural cocoa beans, roasted cocoa beans, ground cocoa, melted chocolate and candy bar chocolate.

Another way that you can draw judges to your chocolate science fair projects is to set up a tasting station. This is a great option regardless of what aspect of chocolate your experiment examines. However, you will want to somehow link the tasting of chocolate to the results of your experiment. For example, if you completed biochemistry science fair projects that explored how chocolate creates endorphins that make you feel like you are in love, then you can have the judges all eat a piece of chocolate and have them think about how it makes them feel.

A texture station is another option that you have. Texture stations will demonstration how the appeal of chocolate is based not only on taste and smell, but on its texture as well. A texture display is a good option if this is what your experiment looked at. One sample activity that you can complete with the judges is to have them put on a latext glove and then to feel the different textures of chocolate and to give you their first impressions about the quality of the chocolate or the predictions of how the chocolate will taste. Next allow them to smell the chocolate that they are feeling and see how their impression changes. Relate this data to your findings and conclusions.

While interactive activities will add a unique touch to your chocolate science fair project, you also need traditional visual components as well. Graphs can be particularly helpful, especially if your experiment has a lot of scientific data tied to it. For example, if you conducted a chemical compound analysis of various types of chocolate you can use a line graph to show the levels of each compound found in each type of chocolate. Pie charts can also be used to demonstrate the elements found in different types of chocolate.

If you are working with an advanced chocolate science fair project, like charting the genetics of popular brands of chocolate, then you will need to construct more elaborate graphics. You may want to provide historical photographs, complex graphs that chart how chemical compounds affect the taste of chocolate or tables that chart the lineage of different types of cocoa plants. The key here is to balance the complexity of your project with the complexity and variety of your visual elements and graphics.