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Brewery-themed labs for high-school students

Started over 6 years ago by Jean Baptiste Schauinger.

Good afternoon,
I'm a French physics and chemistry teacher in Awty International School, Houston TX. Just joined AACT.

Together with a biology teacher, we're working on designing a brewery themed set of science labs for 10-12 graders in the French curriculum.

I'm specifically looking for labs that could be performed by our students. It could be about water quality or treatment, acids & bases, titrations, chemical kinetics and UV-visible spectroscopy.

A series of titrations (sugars, CO2, alcohol...) covering fermentation would be perfect, but I have no idea of how to operate ? (extraction, purification, reactants, concentrations...)

What I was able to find online was only available through payment. I can manage to get a budget for that, but there's no guaranty the labs could be done with a standard school lab equipment.

Would you agree on sharing some of your resources with us, for example pointing me to a lab I could buy that would for sure meet our requirements, or to a resources person who could help me design such a lab ?
Thank you for your help,
ChProf

2 Comments

  • Jeremy Wolf

    Posted over 6 years ago

    Jean, I have attached an enzyme action/catalyst lab that might be a fit for what you are looking for. Your request is a little scattered, though, so it is tough to give an exact resource that would fit. But the lab is on catalase and hydrogen peroxide, but could be modified for yeast and sugar fermentation. I hope it helps.

  • Kaleb Underwood

    Posted over 6 years ago

    Hi Jean, I am right down the street from you at Duchesne Academy. Feel free to reach out sometime. As for your question, I am not aware of any labs like this off hand, though I do know of labs where students prepare biodiesel and go through the processes of fermentation, distillation, testing for dissolved O2, and comparing combustion via a normal kerosene flame by holding flames to a piece of foil and seeing if carbon soot from incomplete combustion are present. I will continue to see if I have anything or know of anything that is like you describe. Sorry that I don't have anything off hand.