Design a Process to Remove Iron: Cereal Magnets
How much iron does fortified cereal contain?Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399 USA. All rights reserved. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=cereal&ex=1#ai:MP900448567|mt:2|
Student groups compete to design a process that removes the most iron from fortified cereal. Students experiment with different materials using what they know about iron, magnets and forces to design the best process for removing iron from the cereal samples.
Students act as "reverse" food engineers by designing processes to remove the iron from fortified cereal. It is the job of chemical food engineers to add certain vitamins and minerals to processed food as part of the industrial food manufacturing process.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain that minerals are an important part of the human diet.
- Explain that different minerals have different roles in human health and state some of them.
- Describe why iron is an important part of the human diet.
- List several foods that contain iron.
- Describe why food engineers add iron and other minerals to cereal.
- Explain how magnetic fields work.
- State that the iron in our cereal is the same iron that is attracted to magnets.
- Describe the engineering design process.