Listed below are the activities we developed which for the most part, flow from the organization of our book, "The Chemical Story of Olive Oil from Grove to Table" which is to be published by the Royal Society of Chemistry and will be out early next year if we get the galleys back soon. If anyone is interested in getting detailed copies of the activities, email pbohara@amherst.edu.
Chapter 1: Olive Origins
- Activity 1A: Explorations and presentations from ancient texts ranging from the Talmud to the Koran to the Old and New Testaments, to the writings of Pliny, Hippocrates, Homer, and Calumut.
- Activity 1B: A "like dissolves like" lab in which students in groups of three extracted different botanical samples with both olive oil and water to discover which components of the plant were solubilized by the different solvents. Extracts were analyzed by color and odor immediately, after four days, after one month, and at the end of the semester. The botanicals analyzed were orange peel, sun-dried tomato, vanilla bean, dried ghost pepper, star anise, and cinnamon.
- Activity 1C: Olive Oil Anointing Ceremony: After reading of several ancient practices that included olive oil in a ritual practices such as the anointing of a king, the birth of a child, or the death of a loved one, the class designed its own Olive Oil Ritual Anointing Ceremony complete with a scriptural reference (The Colleges Catalog), a special "prayer" to be said (reading the preamble to the College's Mission Statement) and a creative anointing ceremony with oil that bound us as part of a group together. We did this on the last day as well.
Chapter 2: Planting the Tree
- Activity 2A: Visit to a local Centurion Tree. Western MA has, of course, no ancient olive trees, but we were able to visit the "Buttonball Tree", a sycamore tree that is over 400 years old in nearby Sunderland MA. A tree forester from UMass joined us on the field trip and discussed how ages of trees are measured, how they aged and some of the stresses that they undergo in their lifetime.
Chapter 3: Growing the Tree
Activity 3A: Students set up "Facebook Profiles" for the major chemical components in olive oil including triolein, hydroxytyrosol, vitamin E, chlorophyll, oleoeuropein, and ligstroside.They were instructed to put up basic info (structures, molar mass) and to include who they would be "friends" with and what their special talents were.
- Activity 4A: Not quite Olives but Apples Class took a trip to a Cider Mill and observed the picking and pressing of apples in the mill and the fermentation and bottling that occurred in the nearby hard cider facility. The trip was especially valuable for allowing them to see how the filtering process works on an industrial level.
- Activity 5A: Our first Press - with Olives from an Olive Bar (there are no fresh olives in Western MA). Students were given olives of 5 different cultivars that were brined olives from a local olive bar. They performed physical analysis of the olives including pit to fruit ratio and density analysis, ground them up in a food mill, centrifuged the paste, and reported % oils for the five varieties.
- Activity 5B: Building a scale model of an olive mill. From the intake side with a fruit handler, to the crusher - students decided to adopt the millstone approach, then to a malaxer, a three phase centrifuge and then the final polisher - students constructed a mock up of the mill from ....... tinker toys. The parts all integrated and the conveyor belts, hammer mill, rotors, and centrifuges all turned! The mill is on display in the science library
- Activity 6A. Students worked in teams to design tri-fold brochures that described on of the basic chemical tests that an oil undergoes to be certified as EVOO. Five groups prepared brochures on free fatty acid, UV tests, peroxides, DAG and PPP. Their brochures put the science into terms that a layman can understand.
- Activities 7A, 7B and 7C Students learned how to taste in three stages. In the first activity, students tasted monovarietals, and evaluated them using a simple 3 point scale. They were introduced to the basic strippagio technique. This activity explored taste saturation and linkages (such as bitter and salty) and explored retronasal and orthonasal analysis. In activity 7B, they were introduced to standards for pungency, bitterness, acidity, astringency, rancidity, fusty and musty, and muddy sediment after which we tasted a flight of oils and ranked them from mild to robust. In activity 7C, students blind sampled four high quality oils and two supermarket blends and were asked to rate them on a 10 point scale and report their results in tabular and radar graph format.
- Activity 8A Presentation of Various Epidemiological Studies, groups of students worked together to explore the websites, study designs and outcomes of five of the largest studies to date on olive oil. Results were presented in-class presentations and discussion.
- Activity 8B Medical Ethics discussion Students watched the feature film "Alonzo's Oil" which features a treatment for a disabling inherited disease, caused by fatty acid metabolic errors and discussed ethics of research and patient care, and the responsibilities to the families of patients.
- Activity 9A Making Olive Oil Soap by the Cold Processing method with an Immersion Blender.
Chapter 10: Sustainability
- Activity 10A: Students were provided cost analysis for testing and standards for the California Olive Oil Council and some manufacturing and cost figures. They were asked to make recommendations to the Olive Grove Owner on the best plan for managing the grove, producing a quality oil, and minimizing green house gas emissions under five different scenarios.
