Rutgers University Trip

   On Wednesday we traveled to the Douglass Campus of Rutger's University and explored the department of food sciences. Firstly we were given a power point presentation by Dr. Karl Matthews that explored the key components of the department. Dr. Matthews' research focussed on microbial safety of food impacts on consumers nationally and internationally. To begin with he discussed his work and the different cultural interpretations of foods that may seem strange to one group of people, but customary to the other group. Lastly, Dr. Matthew's talked about some of the different majors available at the school (there are actually 159 offered), and discussed the different jobs, like those in pharmaceuticals, associated with this field. Next we went on a tour of different labs.
   We first explored the mass spectrometry lab. The man working this lab seemed to have a very time consuming, yet interesting job. He explained to us some of the different laboratory methods and techniques used to identify the amount and type of chemicals present in a sample, which involved measuring the mass-to-charge ratio and abundance of gas-phase ions.
   Next we went to the sensory lab where we met two young ladies who were studying at Rutgers. The first young lady to speak had previously worked at Pepsi. At Pepsi she focused on consumer emotion, or essentially how the consumer feels about a product in relation its appearance, taste, smell, touch, sound. She looked at all the five senses. The other young lady working in this lab discussed her area of academic interest, and told us a little about her current research paper/thesis. Her paper, which was about whether or not if an individual liked his or her dietary food options he or she would be more effective in loosing weight, sounded very interesting. I found the "super-taster" test fascinating. We all tested whether we were super-tasters, medium-tasters, or non-tasters by putting a paper strip on our tongues and judging our response to it. If you were repulsed by a bitter test, you were a super-taster, if you did not taste anything at all, you were a non-taster, and if your response was somewhere in the middle you were a medium-taster.
  The last two labs we visited, the Food Chemistry and Food Engineering labs, were fascinating as well. I felt that seeing plasma for the first time was a highlight of the trip. We learned about the uses of plasma, that ranged from uses in luxury car production to uses in medicine and the treatment of surgical wounds.
  We ended the day with a hands-on experiment in the reading room and Pilot plant. The spherification lab we completed covered the principle that when a solution containing sodium alginate is dripped into a calcium chloride bath, calcium ions react with alginate molecules by allowing them to align and bind so that a thin gel membrane forms around the droplets. Ultimately, our afternoon spent at Rutger's University was enlightening.