Hagberg Falling Number Simulation


The Hagberg Falling Number is important in determining grain quality, especially for bread-making. This test is done by churning the flour with warm water (essentially making gravy) and timing how long a plunger takes to sink to the bottom of the mixture. A higher falling number reflects higher quality, and I wanted to create a simulation to show the testing process. Corwin also had the same idea, so we split up the work into two parts: he would split simulations up based on location, and I would split mine up by rye type.

This interactive simulation allows you to choose which rye type you’d like to look at, and then use the buttons in the bottom right to play, pause, and rewind the simulation. The average for that rye type is also shown, so it is interesting to see how much higher Vauxhall is than any other location. There is also an option to see each rye type beside one another.

This simulation is interesting in the fact that it is “soft-coded”- it calculates everything you see based on the numbers in the data table. If another experiment was conducted, it would simply be a matter of putting the file into the program and everything would automatically be recalculated (number of rye types, names of each rye type, averages for each, etc.).