AS Biology?

Question

How would you compare the sweetness of glucose, fructose,maltose and sucrose? and make it a fair test? any ideas? Thanks

Answer 1

As far as I know there is no scale of sweetness like there is for pH for example. The best test I could think of to perform would be to measure a substance's ability to counteract another flavor (salty or bitter for example.) You might try taking a fixed quantity of black coffee and measuring the amount of each substance needed in order to make the coffee taste sweet. To make it a fair test, I would have more than one person conduct the experiment.

Answer 2

Blind testing, double blind if you want to be super scrupulous.
You can either test all of them in solutions of equal molar strength and ask for ratings of sweetness from the subject (very subjective), or have a set of solutions for each sugar that vary in strength, get the subject to tell you whether or not they perceive the solution to be sweet. Include some distilled water too as a control.

Answer 3

There is only one way to compare between things and that is through the use of your God given 'senses'. Just have a little of each (you might find spacing the time of consumption useful) and then try awarding a scale of 1-10 to each and the let some other guys do the same. Some sort of sampling I would say!

Answer 4

You'd need tests to be double-blind, where neither tester nor taster knew which was which, and you'd need to have tasters eat something before each sample, so the tastes don't all blend together.

Answer 5

you would have to do user testing using equal concentrations of each sugar.

Answer 6

add iodine solution to it!!