Nelson Harris

11/8/10
Background: Fats come from different places like food and
liquid. There are two kinds of fat. Saturated fat which is
unhealthy an found in animals, and unsaturated fat which
is healthy and found in plants. The percent of fat in a food
is the amount of fat in the food.
Purpose: We’re trying to find out the fat in McDonalds
hashbrowns.
Materials: Acetone, McDonalds hashbrown, Stirrer,
beaker, petri dish, and graduated cylinder.
Procedure:
1. Weigh beaker. Add 5 grams of food to the beaker.
2. Record weight of beaker with food in it.
3. Add 20 mililiters of acetone to the food in the beaker.
4. Stir until well mixed for a minute. Then settle for a
minute.
5. Pour only acetone into the petri dish.
6. Add another 10 milliliters of acetone to the food and
repeat steps 4 and 5.
7. Place the petri dish with acetone and beaker with food
in a well vented area.
8. Allow the acetone in the petri dish to dry overnight in a
well ventilated area so you can see the extracted fat.
9. Allow beaker with the food to dry overnight.
10. Weigh beaker with food (Record in data table).
11. Clean beaker and food.
12. Calculate weight difference and record it in the data
table. The weight difference is the amount of fat that was
extracted from the sample.
13. Observe and record the appearance of the fats.
Data:
Food Weight of Weight of Total # of Percent of
Type beaker beaker grams fat
McDonald 168.5 173.5 5 grams 5 percent
hashbrow
n

Scientific Prediction Reasoning: I predict theres more than

50 percent of fat in the foods because of the fact that I
know all of them are unhealthy.
Class
Data
Food Percent of fat
Butter Bagel 12 percent
Biscotti 22.6 percent

Conclusion:

In the DYO lab that ive recently did, i extracted fat from a
McDonald hashbrown. The data that i found was that the
hashbrown weighed 168.5 grams with the beaker before
we extracted the fat. But after the fat was extracted the
weight plus beaker surprisingly the weight increased to
173.5 grams. My prediction of how much percent of fat in
the hashbrown was wrong because i predicted that there'd
be 50% or more fat in it when it only has 5% of fat. The
difference between a saturated fat and an unsaturated fat
is that saturated fat is unhealthy and from animals.
Unsaturated fat is healthy and from vegetables. The data i
found didnt make sense to me at all because we extracted
the fat from the hashbrown and instead of it getting lighter
in weight, it got heavier. The result that was most
surprising to me was the extracted hashbrown being
heavier than the unextracted one. To make sure my datas
correct id have to do this test about 1 or 2 more times.