What you'll need:

• A big potato

• 200 ml of water for each pot, so 400 ml in total because we have 2 pots)

• 2 medium sized cooking pots

• A knife

• A cutting board

• An apron (so you could wear it in the kitchen)

• A stove

• Paper towels

• A chopstick

• A ruler

• A weighing scale

• A peeler

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Preparation before the experiment...

• An obvious step: prepare all your equipment and put them all near you

• Make sure your workspace is neat and clear of obstacles

• Tie your hair back if necessary and also make sure your clothing is tidy with nothing sticking out

• Wear your apron

• Ask an adult to help you throughout the experiment

• Always stand up during an experiment - you'll never know when you'll need to run away from an accident or an experiment-gone-wrong!!!

• Don't eat the potatoes until they are cooked - you don't want a stomachache, do you?

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Variables to keep in mind in this experiment...

Independent variable:

• Surface area of potato (whether if it is in small or big cubes)

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Dependent variable:

• Softness of the potato

• How cooked the potato is

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Controlled variable:

• Mass of potato

• Temperature of water

• Volume of water

• Type of potato

• Time duration for potato to react

• Total width, height and length of potato cubes alltogether

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Steps:

* If you don't feel comfortable with doing some of the steps by yourself e.g. switching on the stove or any steps requiring sharp tools, kindly ask an adult to help or supervise you, especially in step 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

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1. Prepare 200 ml of water and put it in a medium sized cooking pot. Repeat this again so you get 2 medium sized cooking pots filled with 200 ml each.

2. Heat both the pots with low fire.

3. Peel the potato with a peeler and cut the potato into a cube with the width, height and length of 3 x 2 x 1 cm on a cutting board. Use a ruler to measure the dimensions accurately. Do this another time to get two big potato cubes.

4. Use a weighing scale to measure the mass of both of the whole potato cubes and make sure they both weigh the same. If they weight very differently, cut the potato little by little and weight it again until they reach about the same mass.

5. Now, cut one of the potato cubes into 6 equal tiny potato cubes and leave the other potato cube as a whole.

6. Once you see the water boiling and bubbling, put the 6 tiny potato cubes into one pot and the whole potato cube into another pot. Start timing this instant.

7. Use a chopstick to poke at the potatoes every 30 seconds to see whether if they are becoming softer or are still hard to deduce if the potatoes are cooked or not. Record your results in a table as shown below and keep doing this until 4 minutes has ended.

8. Once 4 minutes is reached on the timer, stop timing and switch off the fire. Carefully take out the potatoes from the pot and dry them gently with a paper towel; then, poke at the potatoes to see which potato is softer (more cooked).

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Table of results (for you to fill):

Copy this table so you could fill in your wonderful experiment results!

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