Final Project Guidelines Below is a summary of the basic guidelines and policies for Final Projects. Expectations: The idea of the final project is for you to take a recipe that is of interest to you and try to understand in some depth how the recipe works and why the different choices that are implicit in the recipe are made. As we have seen in this course, there are many ways to confront a recipe or some aspect of cooking in scientific terms. In some of our labs, we varied one parameter and saw how a recipe changed when the parameter was varied. For example in the mac and cheese lab, we made the sauce in a variety of ways and studied the effect of different ingredients on the viscosity of sauce. And this really helps us to start to take apart a recipe and try to understand what you could do, and what you could not do. When you are choosing a recipe for your final project, you need to choose something that is realistic. In other words, you have to find something that you know how to make and is relatively simple, so that you have a chance of executing it properly and trying to understand it. You can find inspirations in cookbooks or from your own/family cooking. The key is to find a recipe that excites you and try to make it and understand it. Grading: The final project is worth 160 points (or 20% of your overall grade) Templates for final project report: Motivation: Summarize here the motivation for your project. Why is it an interesting question to investigate in both scientific and culinary context? What can you learn from looking at the problem from a scientific perspective? Please note that simply cooking a recipe is not an acceptable motivation for the final project. Materials & Methods: How would you design the project to achieve your motivation? What materials will you need and what methods can you use? Variation of ingredients or cooking techniques are expected for the final project. Also, please make sure that you include a standard version (as prescribed by the original recipe). Results and Discussion: Describe your experiments and the corresponding results. It is often useful to use pictures, diagrams or tables to present your data and then also explain in words what they represent. Briefly discuss what each of your results mean. Conclusion and Future Directions: Briefly conclude by summarizing what you found, i.e briefly restate what you explained in more detail in the results and discussion. In addition, state what you think would be the most interesting questions to answer next based on what you found. For example, if you investigated the behavior of a particular thickener, some possible future directions would be to see how it behaves in combination with other thickeners, how it behaves when heated, or what happens when you add another ingredient. Citation and Reference: Provide correct citation for relevant sources for your project.