Thursday, February 10

One Tonne a Miel

Cub Scout sells 10 tons of popcorn.



This feel-good story got me wondering:  Say you have one pound of unpopped popcorn kernals and then pop them all.  Would the popped popcorn also equal one pound?
My brain tells me that the popped popcorn would weigh slightly less (due to the evaporation of the water contained in each kernal).
Does anyone know?  Where would one find the answer?



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5 comments:

Dave said...

Less. As far as I can see, there's an amount of water in popcorn that would evaporate due to the heat, therefore it is losing something during the popping process.

Dave said...

This extensive article on popcorn says it is ~ 13.5 percent water weight.

Dave said...

Oh, HTML isn't allowed in comments.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/popcorn.html

Sidney said...

This is an interesting question, and I am glad that I am not the only one whose mind turns to such rediculous questions. Some of my most recent have been: Why does hair turn grey?
And: if you have a sex change operation can you still have sex?
I agree, popcorn weighs less when popped. For the very reasons you suspected. This would make a fun grade four science project I think. Maybe I will have a child just so that I can help them with this very thing.

dylan said...

Isn't just having a kid akin to a very dangerous science project in and of itself?