Food Chemistry: An Asynchronous Course Designed with Hands-On Experiments for Undergraduate General Education

This article describes a laboratory course designed fornonmajorswith a focus on food chemistry. The course can be delivered in a traditionalformat or in a fully remote, asynchronous format. The course is designedfor students to develop an understanding of how chemists view theworld and how chemists generate knowledge. Food chemistry was selectedas the topic because it taps into the popularity of food and cookingin the larger culture, the topic directly connects to the lives ofstudents, and reagents and materials can be safely used and disposedof at home. Although food and cooking are themes throughout the course,it is not a cooking course; students use food as a medium for scientificexploration. This course has been taught three times during summerterms in 2019, 2020, and 2021 and has been well-received by students.The course's focus on learning the process of doing sciencerather than content knowledge allows for course assessments to focuson whether students are learning the scientific method (i.e., posingand testing a hypothesis, identifying sources of error, determininguncertainty, analyzing results, etc.).