Almonds are bitter and sweet. Fun chemistry experience at home

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Almonds are bitter and sweet. Chemical experiments

Entertaining experiments in chemistry

Entertaining experiences at home / Chemistry experiments for children

Almonds, which are eaten, are usually sweet. But there are also bitter almonds, a close relative of the sweet - their fruits are almost indistinguishable in appearance. Just like a nut, you can’t gnaw on bitter almonds, but they don’t go to waste either. Firstly, an oil used in medicine is obtained from it, and, secondly, it is used as an additive in the food industry, and in home cooking: bitter almonds have a much stronger aroma. The same aroma, which is called almond.

It is possible to distinguish bitter almonds from sweet ones in the same second as you gnaw the nucleolus. But we will try to find chemical differences as well. Not for analytical purposes - the experience is perhaps too complicated to be used every time to recognize the almond, but in order to understand some curious details from the life of the Rosaceae, because the almond belongs to this family.

So experience. Peel a few grains of almonds, remove a dense shell from the seeds and crush them well by adding 5-10 ml of water. Filter the resulting liquid, take about 10 drops of the filtrate and mix with a few drops of a dilute (approximately 10%) sodium hydroxide solution. The reaction of the mixture should be alkaline, so add the alkali solution until a stable color appears with the phenolphthalein solution. You can also use a homemade indicator for this purpose.

Next operation: add a drop of ferrous sulfate solution FeSO₄*7H₂Oh, heat the mixture to a boil, filter and add a few drops of hydrochloric acid to the filtrate. Now the reaction of the mixture should be acidic (test again with the indicator). And your last action: drip one drop of a solution of ferric chloride FeCl₃. Now it will become clear what kind of almonds you have. If he was sweet, then nothing will happen. But if it is bitter, then after adding ferric chloride, a beautiful blue precipitate will instantly fall out, this is Prussian blue, a substance of the composition Fe₄[Fe (CN)₆]₃.

Bitter almonds, which gave a beautiful color reaction, contain a complex substance called amygdalin. And in the same almond there is the enzyme glycosidase, which is able to decompose amygdalin in the presence of water into simpler substances. After a complex chain of transformations, which we will omit for the sake of simplicity, sodium ferrocyanide Na is formed₄[Fe (CN)₆]. It is he who, with the last drop of ferric chloride, gives such a bright color.

But why wouldn't sweet almonds give such a reaction? It does not contain amygdalin. But there is an enzyme glycosidase, and this can be used for another experiment.

We will replace bitter almonds this time with plum, peach or cherry pits: plum, peach, and cherry are also from the Rosaceae family, they have a lot in common with almonds. Including - amygdalin in seeds.

Remove the seeds from the grains (but only those that have not been heated - these should not be seeds from compote or jam; from frozen or fresh fruits - please). Mix them in half with sweet almonds, add water, filter the liquid and continue the experiment as with bitter almonds. As soon as you add the last drop of ferric chloride solution at the end, blue Prussian blue is formed again.

Amygdalin in this experiment is from the seeds of a cherry, peach or plum, and the enzyme that destroys it is from sweet almonds. So, with the help of different fruits, we finally got the same effect as with bitter almonds.

By the way, an important note. Doctors do not advise storing homemade cherries and plums for too long if they have not been cooked. All the danger is in the bones. During the transformation of amygdalin, substances harmful to health can also be formed, although this takes a long time (fresh bones are safe).

Now, having figured out what's what, you can safely give advice. The first of them: although this is troublesome, it is better to remove the seeds from the fruits for peace of mind. And second: compotes and jams will not bring harm even with seeds, because when heated, enzymes that decompose amygdalin are destroyed. If you want, put an experiment with boiled grains - no color will appear.

Author: Olgin O.M.

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