Temper, Temper

Résumé

A really cool thing that most people don’t know about chocolate is that cocoa butter (the main fat in chocolate) can adopt a number of crystal forms. That sounds esoteric, but these crystal forms have practical implications - is your chocolate bar shiny, does it “snap” when you break it, does it melt in your mouth (but not in your hands)? OR is your chocolate dull, sticky, and never quite solid? Guess what - that’s all a result of the crystal structure of the fat! And this can be useful for a demo or activity on crystals and enthalpy of fusion in a materials science, process engineering, or thermodynamics class.