Product Analysis
Maren Bryan (anything revised/edited is bolded)
Pina Coolada Ice Cream
Our ice cream is a perfect balance of pineapple and coconut that will make you feel like you are on a tropical island escape!
Created by: Maren Bryan, Beau Darabi
Group #: 12
Block #: 1st
Teachers: Stallings and Kennedy
Date: 13 September 2016
Our Purpose
Hypothesis
Materials
-2 cups of milk
-1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
-Gallon sized ziplock bag of ice and rock Salt
Safety Plan & Product Safety Reflection
Procedure
- Start by getting one small snack sized ziploc bag, one big zip lock bag, the Master of Mixes Pina Colada Mix, vanilla extract, rock salt, ice, and milk.
- Now that you have all the ingredients, pour 1 ½ cups of the pina colada mix into the small bag.
- Then, pour 2 cups of milk into the small bag that also contains the pina colada mix. Finally, put in 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract. (Don’t worry about mixing it all yet.)
- Fill the big gallon sized bag with ice until it is about ½ to ¾ full. Once it is this full, start pouring in the rock salt. (This amount is determined by how much the group thinks they need. It can keep being refilled.) Start by pouring about ½ a cup of rock salt, but more can be added if needed.
- Put the small bag with the pina colada mix, milk, and vanilla extract into the big bag with the ice and rock salt. (make sure the small bag is completely closed!!)Start shaking the bag until the small bag’s mixture turns into an ice cream texture. This can be determined by feeling the bag a couple of times during the shaking process.Try to shake the big bag containing the small bag inside as continuously as you can! (the big bag can be refilled with ice and rock salt if it needs to be.) It should be shaken for around 10-15 minutes.
- Enjoy the pina colada flavored ice cream!
Revisions
Our main revision in our prototype was that we had to add 2 cups of milk as the base so that there were less solutes in the product. A solute is the substance dissolved in a given solution. This affected the product greatly because with less solutes the ice cream could freeze much faster. It was able to freeze much faster as a result of the solutes causing freezing point depression which is the process in which adding a solute to a solvent decreases the freezing point of the solvent. After removing these solutes, the ice cream could freeze at a much higher temperature which meant the freezing point was obtainable significantly easier. We also used pina colada flavor mix, which allowed for lots of fats in our ice cream which is what makes ice cream creamy.
For the first prototype we had no dairy, which then resulted in a mixture that wouldn’t freeze because of the excessive solutes. Our team then used only pina colada mix for our second prototype, which resulted in an improved ice cream freezing point and flavor. It was able to freeze because there was less solutes than our first prototype, but the ice cream still needed a more creamy texture which would come from more fats. In addition, the product had too strong of a flavor.
For our final product we had a 2 cup milk base, and 1 ½ cup of pina colada flavor which worked great cause the mix froze and you could taste the pineapple coconut flavor. It was a perfect balance of a creamy texture with a pineapple coconut flavor that was not too strong.Quanitative Data Analysis
Our qualitative data shows the improvement in our ice cream as we made each prototype. In our first prototype our product never froze, took a long time to make, and costed the most. We were able to fix many of the errors in our first prototype by using a different mix as the mix we used for this prototype caused the freezing point to increase. Our mix we used for the last two prototypes was much cheaper and could freeze at a lower temperature which made it much quicker to produce. By our last prototype, we were making a product that froze and was for practical. It was more practical as a result of the materials being much less expensive which will also result in the market price of our ice cream to be much lower than we initially intended it to be. The final ice cream also took much less time to make than the average ice cream, which takes about thirty minutes. Our ice cream taking less time will allow for us to make significantly more than other ice cream companies.
Qualitative Data Analysis
Analysis & Conclusions
What happened as you made your product?
As we made our product you could obviously tell that our product’s mix was freezing at a very rapid rate. It was freezing at this rapid rate a result of the rock salt which lowers its freezing point. We also noticed a phase change, from liquid (our mix) to solid (our ice cream). This phase change is exothermic since it lost entropy. This phase change was freezing, which is a physical change, meaning the chemical composition was not affected when making our ice cream. There was also a gain in potential energy from the shaking of the bag which caused the mixes’ molecules to become more compact and dense. We also noticed the ice melting in the bag, which was a result of the loss of kinetic energy from the mix to the rock salt and ice, which created an endothermic change.
On the molecular level, describe the energy transfer and the resulting phase change of your ice cream product.
Explain whether the overall phase change is physical or chemical, and support with evidence.
Why did you create what you did? What did you learn from your market and background research?
Our team created a pina colada flavored ice cream because we wanted to create something that set us apart from the other groups creating ice cream flavors. Although pina colada ice cream has been made in a Ben and Jerry’s limited edition flavor, we felt that this scrumptious flavor deserved to become permanent on grocery store shelves. When researching marketing, we found that unique flavors are the key to success in terms of sales(Susan Soorenko). Our group collectively agreed that we thought pina colada flavored ice cream would be very unique as a result of it tasting more fruity rather than dairy based. In addition, we thought that it would be very uncommon because of it having two very different and distinct flavors in it. We also felt that our ice cream was unique because of our marketing strategies chosen. Rather than focusing solely on the ice cream’s flavor, we also thought of a unique reason to purchase our ice cream. We used the reasoning that our ice cream could allow for an escape from each person’s monotonous everyday lives. We explained that our ice cream was much like a tropical island experience .
From a marketing standpoint our product was a great idea because people always want to see something “brand new” or a “back and better” product. This would have an increased chance of being purchased by consumers because the majority of the population have had a pina colada, but not a pina colada ice cream. We transformed a well known flavor that had not yet been transformed into the delightful ice cream flavor that it had the potential to be.What did you use and why? Be sure to justify each product. Identify the ingredients according to classification of matter (elements, mixtures, compounds, etc..) as you discuss.
Our team used milk as the base ingredient. We used milk because it is very rich in fats, which is what gives ice cream its creamy texture. Another reason we chose milk is as a result of it being insoluble, meaning it does not dissolve in water. Soluble ingredients in ice cream lower the freezing point, which causes freezing-point depression. Since milk is insoluble, it did not affect the freezing point at which the ice cream froze. Also,milk is a mixture, meaning it is composed of two or more compounds or elements in any proportion by weight such that each of which retains it’s identity and specific properties.(“science HQ”). In addition, milk is a type of mixture known as a colloid which means that it is a homogenous mixture.(“school today”) Milk being a colloid benefited our group as this meant that the fats were dispersed evenly throughout the milk. This resulted it being much easier for our group to get a creamy ice cream texture since we were aware of the amount of fat that was going into our product.
Our second most crucial and used ingredient was the “master of mixes pina colada mix”, which is a mixture because there were multiple ingredients mixed in order to create this pina colada mix.. We used this product in order to get the taste of an authentic pina colada, as this mix is typically used to make pina colada drinks. We also used this mix so that we had the perfect balance between pineapple and coconut flavoring in our product.
Our last ingredient is artificial vanilla extract , which is a mixture of different amounts of different compounds of “vanillin”. Vanillin is a compound of 4-Hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde (“PubChem”), but since our vanilla extract was artificial this meant that many compounds were composed together in order to make a mixture. We used this ingredient for a sweeter aftertaste rather than a more bitter one. We used this for the aftertaste because the pina colada mix in our product was giving a very faint aftertaste, that was more bitter than sweet.Is your overall ice cream product homogenous or heterogeneous? Explain why
How did the density of your ice cream affect its overall texture, mouthfeel, and taste?
Evaluate the success of your product as a whole. Did it meet the goals set forth by your team? Why or why not? What could have been done differently?
Evaluate the success of your team. Did you work together effectively? How did your initial norm-setting and contract-writing affect your team performance?
Our team worked very well together. We communicated through a group chat in our phone. Whenever any of us were absent we would still do our part and the other members would be sure to keep them up to date on what needed to be done. Our biggest strong point for the success of our “Frozen Project” was definitely our communication skills between one another because with it we could talk about our successes, fails, our need to improves, and many other ways to improve our project. It also helped significantly that we were all honest with each other and felt confident as a team.
Our initial contract did become helpful when completing this project. It was very useful when deciding what each person should do each day since our roles had already been planned in the contract. It was also beneficial to have set rules in our contract that each member needed to follow.
Overall this project was a complete success with a lot of laughter throughout the making of our superb “Frozen Project”.Citations
"The Science of Ice Cream." RSS. Ice Cream Nation, 2011. Web. 13 Sep. 2016.
-Studios, Andrew Rader. "Chemical Changes Versus Physical Changes." Chem4Kids.com: Matter: Chemical vs. Physical Changes. Chem4kids, n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.
-Soorenko, Susan. "3 Ice Cream Marketing Strategies for Tourist Season & Beyond | Upserve." Upserve. Upserve, 24 June 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2016
-"Vanillin." NCBI. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 9 Oct. 2016. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.