You might already know about gases. There’s plenty of them all around us – even the air we breathe is a gas.
Gases are atoms or clumps of atoms that whizz about like tiny balls, and they’re used in the kitchen ALL the time.
Bread needs gas to make it rise and give it a fluffy texture. The yeast in the bread mix gives out carbon dioxide in gas form – and because gasses take up loads more space than solids or liquids, you end up getting bubbles in the stretchy dough.
Without this gas you wouldn’t get any bubbles and your bread would be pretty flat! If you like making cakes, the baking powder you use creates a chemical reaction that makes gas too, to help the cakes to rise.
And a bottle of fizzy pop is something else that’s no good flat! Carbon dioxide gas is pumped into the drink at very high pressure. Just don’t shake the bottle! It gets messy fast!