Title

STEM Jam

Subjects
Physics and Chemistry

Students’ age
14-16 year old

Duration
2 or 3 45-minute classes

Learning Objectives
The student will:

 Learn about pectin, osmosis, and gas laws while creating jam.
 Practice measuring temperature.

Material
 Fruits  Pectin
 Sugar  Heat source for cooking,
 Pot  Grater, knife, spoons, jars

Activity Set-up
A sample of our grated fruits is taken and a small amount of sugar is added to show students
that fruits will release water in a process called osmosis. We propose the use of carrots,
apples, pineapple, and other fruits in order to explain osmosis process better. The same
process is used to conserve jam, as bacteria are also losing water in osmosis when sugar
concentration is high.
After fruits have released water we can place the pot on a hot plate and cook. When cooking
jam we can use a cooking thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature. A simple graph of
temperature over time can be drawn.
Placing a cold glass over a pot with jam while it cooks will cause water drops to show on the
glass. This is transition similar to those we have in nature when observing rain cycle.
Once the mixture starts to boil we can add sugar, and lemon juice. Chemistry now steps in
and explains the role of pectin. Note that some fruits are low on pectin and cannot be made
into desired jam structure. To avoid that we can either add artificially or we could add apple as
it contains a high account of pectin. Before class students or teacher can use various web
sources to find out about pectin level in fruits they want to use. Here is how to test pectin
levels in fruits.
The suggested experiment is to try to make jam with low pectin fruits like berries and add a
different amount of pectin. After the cooking, students should determine how adding more or
less pectin influenced the structure.
The teacher explains where is pectin found in nature, its chemical structure, as well as behave
of pectin that creates jelly. Lemon helps in pectin creating jelly process. More about it can be
found here.

The work presented in this document has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 research
and innovation programme – project Scientix 3 (Grant agreement N. 730009), coordinated by European
Schoolnet (EUN). The content of the MOOC is the sole responsibility of the organiser and it does not
represent the opinion of the European Commission (EC), and the EC is not responsible for any use that
might be made of information contained.
Another chemical process here is dissolving of sucrose into fructose and dextrose. Pectin is
one of the complex sugars as well.
One could ask students in what aggregate state is the jam? It certainly is not solid and we
can’t call it liquid either.
We heat up jars, pour jam in it, close them and turn them upside down. When they cool down
we can notice that they are much harder to open. The pressure of air inside jar decreases as
jars with jam cool down.