Food Waste Reduction: Understanding time and temperature

by Julia Soondar

Submitted : Spring 2020

Food waste is an environmental problem because of the waste of resources. For this project I used Newton’s Law of Cooling, a differential equation, to calculate how quickly food, specifically milk, can spoil. I conducted an experiment to use as a data set which allowed me to solve for the constants in the equation. Once I plotted the equation, it showed the proportional relationship between time and temperature as the object, in this case the milk, reached the ambient temperature. The milk was able to reach close to the ambient temperature of 80℉ in about 24 minutes, but milk starts growing bacteria at about 45℉. This shows the dangers of mishandling temperature sensitive items and understanding this can help prevent food waste in the future.

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