fairfolio
Saved Projects

The Effect of Ultraviolet Light on the Production of Cholecalciferol in Heavy Cream

CSEF · 2017 Biochemistry/ Molecular Biology

Catherine G. McQueen · San Marcos Senior High School, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of my project was to determine if exposing heavy cream to UV light would be a method of producing cholecalciferol, also known as vitamin D3. Methods/Materials My main materials were a stopwatch, heavy cream, UV light bulb, ceramic light fixture, and glass bottles. I exposed heavy cream to a UV lightbulb for varying lengths of time and tested it with a vitamin D assay at a professional laboratory, in order to see if there was vitamin D production. Results The heavy cream sample had the precursor to vitamin D present when tested. The vitamin D quantities in the heavy cream were measured and they increased a statistically significant amount after exposure to UV light. Conclusions/Discussion I found that heavy cream and many other dairy products contain the precursor to vitamin D, which means that they all had the potential to produce vitamin D. Heavy cream produced vitamin D3 when exposed to UV light, which means that it can serve as an accessible method of obtaining vitamin D3.

Summary statement

As I exposed heavy cream to Ultraviolet light, I found that heavy cream can produce Cholecalciferol (vitamin D3).

Help received

Katherine Phillips at the Food Analysis Laboratory Control Center in the Department of Biochemistry at Virginia Tech provided a gas chromatography for my project and answered questions regarding 7-dehydrocholesterol. John Rathmacher answered my questions about the nature of vitamin D2 and

Competition history

  • CSEF 2017 Biochemistry/ Molecular Biology · Entry S0517

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google