Potato Chip Science: How Greasy Are Your Potato Chips?

Potato chip science is big business! The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) does some very important tests so that the food you eat—including potato chips—is accurately labeled. We may not have access to the FDA’s expensive machines, but we can still do some pretty cool tests without them.For this science fair project, let’s assume you’re a scientist working for the FDA and that you need to double-check the fat content (or “greasiness”) of several brands of potato chips. If you don’t have any specialized machines, then how do you find out how much grease your chips have?One thing we could try is to simply mash up a potato chip and look at how much grease comes out. Paper absorbs grease really well, so we can use it as our “instrument” to help us quantify—or find a number that describes—how much grease is in an individual chip.But wait a minute. Not all potato chips are the same size! Even chips from the same bag come in different sizes, and of course, different brands usually make differently sized chips. If we were to test a really big chip, we would get more grease than if we tested a small one, and this certainly wouldn’t describe how much grease is in a single serving of chips very well. So what’s a good way to determine how much grease is in your potato chips?

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