Carrot cakes are a tradition in 14-year-old Nathaniel Sperry's family, but over the years he noticed that sometimes after cutting into the cake, some of the carrots turned from orange to green. Sperry read that food bloggers identified baking soda as the ingredient that caused the color change.
Sperry found that cakes without baking soda had no green carrots, cakes with the typical amount of baking soda had a few green carrots, and surprisingly, cakes with twice the amount of baking soda also had no green carrots.
Sperry discovered that color compound called anthocyanin reacted to the basic pH level of baking soda. A slight basic pH caused anthocyanin to turn green, but an acidic pH or a really high basic pH turned it yellow or pinkish — similar to the orange color of carrots.
Sperry's future career interest is the following: computer programming.