Testing The Use Of Vegetable Oil By Human Culture

Words: 539
Pages: 3

Vegetable oil is an oil extracted from various types of fruits, seeds, grains, and nuts. It is used to add flavor to food as well as to cook food. Some examples of uses are shortening to give pie crust a crumbly texture, can be used to make other ingredients less sticky, and is used to make soaps, candles, perfumes, and cosmetics. Vegetable oil is important in this experiment because it is the main material I am using to test my hypothesis.
Vegetable oils have been used by human culture for over a thousand years. Some have been used since at least the Bronze Age throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.
The constant variable in my experiment is 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. The dependent variable is how much oil is absorbed by each material in two minutes. The independent variables are table salt, coarse sea salt, baking soda, cornstarch, sand, and cat litter. The controlled variables are 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons of each independent variable used at separate times, 2 paper towels, and stopwatch. A nine inch ceramic pie plate was the vessel that was used to pour the materials in.
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Setting the nine inch ceramic pie plate on a flat surface, I poured 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil into it. Using the first independent variable I sprinkled 2 tablespoons of cornstarch over the surface of the oil and let it sit for 2 minutes. After the 2 minutes it produced a thin paste, but did not absorb all of the oil, and I had to use 4 paper towels to fully clean the