Math class kicks off holiday with a taste of turkey

Students in a Central Michigan University math class enjoyed a tasty Thanksgiving snack while learning how to map data.

Douglas Lapp, a faculty member in the math department, brought to class a turkey breast he’d just pulled out of the oven as part of a lesson about how to use Newton’s Law of Cooling to map data and figure out whether the turkey was safe to eat.

Lapp used a digital thermometer to collect 10 minutes of readings from the 8-pound cut of meat as it cooled. At the start of his measurements, it was approximately 147 degrees Fahrenheit more than an hour after he pulled it from the roaster.

Turkey is considered safe when cooked to 165-170 degrees Fahrenheit. The question was whether it was that temperature when he stopped cooking it.

Newton’s Law of Cooling holds that an object cools at a rate proportional to the temperature difference between it and its surroundings. As part of the lesson, Lapp also recorded the room temperature.

Ten minutes later, the turkey breast had fallen to approximately 143 degrees Fahrenheit.

Lapp plotted the data back to when he pulled it from the roaster and prepared for the big reveal.

The turkey was approximately 186 degrees Fahrenheit when he pulled it out…safe to eat. Lapp started carving and the students celebrated their lesson with a morning snack.