Popping Corn

I asked Jeremy earlier about popcorn. What is it? Is it different from the corn we eat from the can? What makes it pop?

In his wisdom, he suggested I make a "class" out of it. I should take this opportunity to educate myself about something then teach the kids about it. Oh, he's so smart.

So, I did. Yay for the internet when used for educating about popcorn. Not all the questions I was wondering were answered, but definitely enough to teach the kids something new.

Before we got to the popcorn, Nichole and Joshua helped me load the dishwasher and do the rest of the dishes in the sink. That way we'd have room for the popcorn popper on the counter. They were big helpers.

We got the popcorn popper down and the container of popcorn kernals and we learned. The popcorn kernals look like the kernals of corn that we eat from the can, but they are different. They are a special kind of corn. The corn in the can doesn't pop like the popcorn. Inside each of the popcorn kernals is a little bit of water surrounded by a little piece of starch. When they get really hot (with air or with oil), the water says, "Hey, I'm getting hot. Let me out of here." It get so hot that it turns into steam (we've learned about the different states of water before) and goes, "Pop!" It turns the popcorn kernal inside out and we can see the big white part that we can eat.

We put what we learned into practice. The kids loaded the top of the air popper, Jr. turned it on, and Nichole dumped the kernals in. After a little bit they started popping and hopping all over the place and when it was done, the kids were very happy with what they had made. Not to mention getting to eat it.