🧪 Science with Sarah: Making butter 🧈

👉 Watch the video of Sarah’s science experiment at Maverick Elementary here!

Hello parents, teachers and students! It’s a new school year which means new, fun Science with Sarah experiments! Today’s experiment will allow your kiddos to see the water cycle right in a jar!

Be sure to check out GMSA@9 on Wednesdays when Meteorologist Sarah Spivey does the demonstrations and explains the science behind it.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A mason jar with a lid
• Heavy whipping cream
• Sugar or salt (optional)
• A strainer & a bowl

DO THE EXPERIMENT

• Put a small measure of heavy whipping cream in the mason jar. Any measure of cream will be fine, as long as half of the jar is empty
• Optional: If you’d like to flavor the butter, add a little sugar or salt
• Place the lid on the jar and start shakin’!
• Be patient! It’ll take about 5 minutes for the cream to turn into whipped cream and about 10-15 minutes for the cream to turn into butter.
• Once the butter is formed, you’ll need to separate the butter from the buttermilk. Use a strainer and a bowl to do that.

HOW IT WORKS

• Heavy whipping cream is going through a physical change when you shake it
• Fat molecules in the cream get shaken out of position and attract to other fat molecules
• Whipped cream first forms as air gets trapped between the fat particles
• Then, eventually, the fat molecules completely separate forming butter. The buttermilk is the liquid byproduct of making butter and can be used for cooking!

SCIENCE WITH SARAH

If you’d like Sarah and David to come to your school and conduct a science experiment live on KSAT, fill out this form. “Winners” are selected at random.