"Egg"cellent Egg Substitutes: Science Fair 2015

January means Science Fair time at our house. The Science Fair for the younger grades is a chance for them to work with an adult to come up with and test a hypothesis. There is definitely an understanding that they will need to be mentored in their projects. Christian won the last two years partly because he has a scientist dad as a mentor, and partly because he has a very good scientific brain of his own. 

Christian's whole class was required to participate this year, but he would have anyway because he enjoys it. When we were trying to come up with a project this year, we definitely wanted to make it personal and applicable because that has really been successful in the past two years. Hyrum was just diagnosed with an egg allergy at the beginning of December, so we were trying to figure out how to make foods without eggs. When I suggested the idea of making it into a project, Christian loved the idea. He was really excited to help his little brother and find a good substitute for eggs. He especially wanted Hyrum to be able to eat cookies again :)

He did some research on the Internet and found some different substitutes to try, and then he and Jonathon came up with a good experiment to test them. He ended up testing applesauce and a combination of baking soda and vinegar as his two substitutes. Christian decided to try the substitutes in three different baked goods: muffins, brownies, and cookies. We did boxed mixes because it would just take too much time and effort to make them all from scratch. Plus, it was easier for Christian to help with the boxed mixes. To make it a good experiment, we had to make four batches of each food. One batch contained no egg and no substitute (the negative control), One batch was made with egg as usual (the positive control), one used applesauce in place of eggs, and one used 1 tsp of baking powder and 1 tbsp of vinegar as the egg substitute. It was a lot of work to make all of the food. Christian got tired of it after about an hour, but we encouraged him to keep going. Once all of the food was baked, he measured the height or diameter of each item to test their leavening. Egg was definitely the best, but applesauce also performed well. The baking soda and vinegar muffin completely collapsed and the brownies were hard as rock and could not even be cut. 

For the next part of his experiment, he took the food to some friends (Thanks Knapps!) and had them take a survey and rate the food from 1-10 on taste and texture. Once again, the foods containing egg did the best, but applesauce was a close second. He compiled all of the data, and Jonathon helped him make some graphs that explained it all. His hypothesis ended up being mostly correct. He thought that egg would be the best, but he also thought that the other substitutes would both be good enough to eat since they seemed so popular on the Internet. The baking soda and vinegar brownies ended up being completely inedible, so that was different than he predicted. Overall, he concluded that applesauce made a great substitute for eggs in the three foods we tested.

We thought we had given ourselves plenty of time to finish everything, but Jonathon and Andrew ended up getting a stomach bug later that week and were really sick. That delayed the project. We finally finished it at 11:00 pm the night before it was due... oops! I helped Christian make the poster. I did the cutting, and Christian did the glueing. It all came together in the end and looked great. We even included a cute picture of Hyrum eating an applesauce muffin to show how relevant his project was to our family. We tried to get Christian to practice giving his presentation a few times at home, but he had a bad attitude and didn't want to give the presentation to us. Apparently, it is so embarrassing to practice in front of your parents! We did what we could and then left it up to him. When I picked him up from school the next day, I was anxious to hear how it all went. Before I could even ask, he showed me his big BLUE ribbon. Yes, he won first place AGAIN! He's the BACK to BACK to BACK champion of his school's science fair.

His projects are decent and the science is well thought out, but what I think really puts Christian on top is his ability to explain his projects. Jonathon is excellent about explaining and teaching Christian about what they are doing every step of the way. Christian is completely involved in everything, and he understands how the experiments work. This year, there was a three-way tie for first after the initial judging. All three of the kids happened to be from Christian's class. They were all called down to the office and were asked to give their presentation again in front of the head judge. Christian came out on top. We are sure proud of our little scientist. If I had to guess what Christian will be doing in 20 years, I would guess something in the medical or scientific research field. We will see what happens in the future, but for right now, we are sure happy with the effort and work he puts into his schooling. Great Job, Christian!