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Hi, I'm Alanna from South Korea and currently a senior at Emma Willard School. Last year, as a junior, I started my signature project. Since my grandmother, who doesn't smoke at all and doesn't have smokers around, was diagnosed as a lung cancer, I wondered what caused and how to solve the problem. Then, after figuring out that harmful gases such as PAHs and HCAs are emitted when cooking meat in high temperature and that they can possibly cause mutation for cancer, I started a project to find methods and ingredients that can reduce the emission of those harmful gases when cooking; however, because of instrumental and technical limitations, I had to more focus on injecting chemicals through vernier mini GC and getting used to the basic use of GC. With continuous curiosity to see a professional GC that can really run through some samples, I sent emails to professors in Korea who seemed possible to have access to labs with GC. Then I got a reply back from Food Chem Lab in Dongguk University in Korea. I got a chance to visit the lab and see procedures of real lab projects happening, especially the usage of GCs. As a continuation of last year's project, this year, I hope I can get an access to a lab to really cook in different methods and with different ingredients, in order to find the best condition for cooking meat that is the safest. Lab Experience During Summer at Food Chemistry Lab: Department of Food and Biotechnology, Dongguk University |