S

 Are insulated lunch

bags worth your money?

By Maddy Nacci

What conditions are best for keeping yogurt at a cool temperature until

lunchtime?

Hypothesis:

My hypothesis is that the yogurt will stay colder when it is frozen and in an insulated lunch bag with an ice pack, than when it is in a paper bag with an ice pack or in an insulated lunch bag with an ice pack.

Materials:

Sharpies, paper lunch bag (13X7.9X27cm), 2 University of Hawaii insulated lunch bags, 3 Lite and Fit vanilla yogurt cups (1.5 lbs), 1 Blue Ice ice pack, a thermometer

Safety:

One rule I followed was to maintain a clean workspace. I did this by cleaning of the counters before the experiment. Another rule I followed was to be aware of your surroundings. I followed this by putting the lab in a place that no one could touch or knock over.

Procedure:

1.Take the temperature of original yogurt. 2.Placed a cup of yogurt and an ice pack into a paper

or insulated bag. 3.Wait 4 hours and 40 minutes, the time we usually

have between breakfast and lunch. 4.Take the yogurt out of the bags and take the

temperature with a Celsius thermometer. 5.Record the temperature.

Variables:

Independent-kind of bag Controlled-length of time yogurt

sat, ice pack, brand of yogurt, flavor of yogurt, size of yogurt, weight of yogurt

Data:

Are Insulated Bags worth your Money graph?

Series102468

10121416

Tem

pera

ture

afte

r 4hr

s an

d 40

min

s

STORAGE

Frozen w/Insulated bag

Not frozen w/Insulated bag Not frozen w/

Paper bag

Conclusion:

In conclusion, my hypothesis stated that the yogurt will stay colder when it is frozen and in an insulated lunch bag with an ice pack, than when it is in a paper bag with an ice pack or in an insulated lunch bag with an ice pack. My hypothesis was correct. According to the data, the yogurt stayed the coldest when frozen with an ice pack in an insulated bag at 0 degrees C. In second, was the insulated bag at 10 degrees C. In last, was the paper bag at 14 degrees C.

Conclusion:

One possible problem that may have occurred during the experiment, was that we did not check how long the ice pack had been frozen. So, it may have been colder at different times. We could have fixed this by recording how long we froze the ice pack so it was at the same temperature for each storage condition. Another problem that may have occurred is that one location in the kitchen may be colder than another location. We could fix this by putting the yogurt in the same exact place.

Final conclusion:

Insulated lunch bags are

worth your money!