Chocolate Symmetry

Unfold the paper, take a spoonful of the chocolate, and draw half a heart along one side of the fold. Fold the paper again and lightly touch the top of it to make sure the chocolate sticks to the paper. Now, unfold the paper, and you will see a heart shape!

For the second shape, take another piece of parchment paper and fold it in half. Unfold it, and draw the right side of a parallelogram with the chocolate along the fold. Here is an example parallelogram for reference: https://cdn1.byjus.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/angles-of-a-parallelogram-1.png. (If referencing this image, imagine there is a line connecting the B and D angle). Fold the paper, and lightly touch it. Then, unfold the paper and you’ll see a triangle shaped figure! What happened to the parallelogram? Why did this happen?

Well. symmetrical objects have at least one line of symmetry. This means that there is a line that divides the shape into identical halves! The heart shape is a symmetrical object since it has a line that splits it into identical halves. But, a parallelogram does not have any lines of symmetry. Because of this, when we split the parallelogram in half, we did not get identical halves. Thus, a parallelogram is asymmetrical.

If you put the shapes in the freezer, you will get fun shaped chocolate pieces that you can snack on.

Who knew learning about symmetry could be so sweet! To learn more about symmetry, check out StemChef’s “Fearful Symmetry” escape room! The escape room meets requirements 3 and 4 for the Cub Scouts Nova Awards! Check out the “for Cub Scouts” tab on our website for more information. Also, be sure to check us out on TikTok and Instagram for more content, and check out our other blog posts posted on stemchef.com for more fun food based experiments!