Thursday, February 11, 2010

Bake lab chemistry

Today in the bake lab there was some serious chemistry going on. Sadly, I'm not talking about the kind when my future husband walks into the room, sweeps me off my feet and takes me away to eat vegetables and bread together. Today I'm talking about the chemistry, laws of physics, or whatever science explains the collection of static electricity in the air. We had some serious electron activity going on as student #1 and I attempted to sift some innocent powdered sugar. It was so serious, as I stood a good 4 inches away from the table and did the total body workout of giggling back and forth in just the right manner to sift the substance, the electricity built up jumped from the table to my leg and zapped me. So loud, others could hear the action as it hit me. Thinking that possibly we were just idiots sifting through a metal sifter on a metal table, we switched to the wooden table. Same thing. As the powdered sugar came through the sieve instead of falling in a nice moutain, you could see it jumping out and attaching to our clothing. Shocks still occuring, we decided they need to put a warning label on those bags of powdered sugar. I'm sure the fact that it's winter in Kansas and if it's not currently raining there is 0% humidity might have something to do with it. But really, although I have a science degree my science reasoning right now can't really come up with any better explanation of the serious chemistry going on in the bake lab today.

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