Volume 2 | 5 May 2020
Edible Knowledge ® Weekly Notables
In this weekly newsletter Dale shares his favorite notables for the week and any Edible Knowledge ® news and offers. Promotions for our books and Online Course pre-order pricing continue .... see below)!
Snapping Turtles in my Pond
Many of you seemed to enjoy last week's butterfly video, so this week I took a couple pictures of a snapping turtle sunning himself on a log in our pond. I tried to get a closer picture, but I spooked him and he rolled into the water. These pictures were taken May 4th, 2020. We have a pair of snappers in our pond, always active this time of year.
Edible Knowledge ® News
Our two new books are being received well!
  • Introduction to Food Science For Kids! is for students as young as 6.
  • Introduction to Physics and Engineering uses LEGO® bricks to teach physics. Go figure...this one is very popular!
Try them...you and your kids will love them!
Use promocode VIRUSFREE to get free shipping plus free gifts! At $35 you get a free 4"x6" Kitchen Cheat Sheet refrigerator magnet, and at $125 a free signed copy of Get the HECK Out of Our Way! will be added to your cart.
Going live May 13 with our first course...something awesome to do over the summer!
We have chosen to partner with Thinkific, a state of the art online education platform, to power our online coures. You're going to love it!
  • Interactive
  • Video and voice discussion from Dale
  • Stories, hints, and anecdotes that will engage your students.
  • Automatically graded quizzes.
  • Completion Certificates for your files.
Pre-order for 25% off until the launch!
Some Edible Knowledge ®

  • Popcorn and cheese puffs have a lot in common. Both are formed when starch is heated under pressure. The pressure is suddenly released, allowing the heated starch to expand rapidly. For popcorn, it's the tough outer layer of the popcorn kernel that contains the pressure. For cheese puffs, a machine called an extruder is used, which is basically a screw in a barrel with a small orifice (called a die) at the end. The die's orifice can have different shapes, and is how many cereals, pet foods, and snacks are made. The screw forces the dough against the die, building up heat and pressure along the way, and as the dough exits the die hole it expands rapidly. The process for both popcorn and cheese puffs involves heating starch with enough moisture (there's moisture in the popcorn kernel) past what is called the glass transition temperature so it's rubbery and pliable, otherwise it wouldn't expand. Here's a cool video showing popcorn popping in slow motion. And another one showing twin-screw extrusion. My master's degree thesis involved extrusion of milk proteins. Extruders are very cool and are used for tons of stuff, not just food products.. Much more on this in my upcoming course: Introduction to Food Science: Carbohydrates!
Common Food Myths

Researchers at Alabama A&M explain some common food myths.
The Scientific MythBusters at Alabama A & M University

Despite impressive advances in food science and technology, consumers continue to be seduced by the concept of all-natural, clean foods and ingredients: U.S. sales of organic food products totaled nearly $50 billion in 2017, and food products...

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www.ift.org
What does 1 Trillion Dollars in $100 dollar bills look like?
We hear a lot about the COVID-19 federal aid packages, the first three of which amount to just over $3,000,000,000,000 (that's 3 trillion dollars). A trillion is so big it's a hard number to understand. My oldest son found a link that shows this graphically...it's pretty amazing! Click on the link and check it out. There is another link at the bottom of that page that showw what the national debt looked like at the time, about 10 years ago....today it's almost 2.5x that. Regardless of what you think of national spending, with a current debt of almost $25,000,000,000,000 ($201,000 per taxpayer) it's something we should all keep in mind.
What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"... A billion dollars... A hundred billion dollars... Eight hundred billion dollars... One TRILLION dollars... What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so ...

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www.pagetutor.com
See you next week!
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