Candy Experiments

2020-09-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

Drop a Warhead in baking soda water, and bubbles erupt. Leave a Skittle in water, and the S floats to the surface. Melt a Starburst, and shiny oil spots form. You're doing candy experiments--science experiments with candy.

Melt Halloween candy. Dissolve Valentine hearts. Float Easter Peeps. Or let your kids create their own candy science experiments.

Candy experiments. All candy. All science. All fun.

As seen in Family Fun, Parents, Mothering Magazine, Highlights, the Chicago Tribune, ParentMap, Miami Family, and The Red Tricycle

Swimming Gummi Gecko

2013-05-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

Here's another fun gummi gecko trick. After it sits in water for two days, it's flexible enough to go swimming!

Video: Hearts Bobbing in Soda

2013-05-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

Up and down the Brach's hearts go.
Why do they do it? Do you know?

This is one of my favorite experiments to do at presentations, and it works really well on TV.
It was featured a few months ago in a Candy Experiments excerpt on Parenting.com, and I also have the instructions on my blog.

If you want to see how long the hearts can bob, here's the long version of the video.

Sticking M's

2013-04-24T22:28:00.000-07:00

When I demonstrate candy experiments, floating M's are still one of the biggest crowd-pleasers. Apparently my four-year-old is also entranced by them, because she invented a new floating M's experiment by touching one of the floating M's with her finger:

Who knew you could actually pick them up?

Acid Test for Science Fair

2013-04-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

Science fair project: use baking soda solution and purple cabbage indicator to compare candy acidity. Purple cabbage indicator (made by boiling, or soaking, purple cabbage in water) changes color based on pH. If you add a base, it turns blue, and if you add acid, it turns pink. Here's the original color.

First, we dissolved various candies in indicator. The brightest pink are the most acidic.

Then we added baking soda water to each sample to bring it to neutral, and compared how much soda we used for each sample to arrive at an acidity comparison.

One fun little thing: to dissolve the maximum amount of soda in water, we warmed the water up. As it cooled, the soda started to crystallize again. Apparently, our initial solution was a little supersaturated.

Airy Chocolate

2013-04-17T12:03:00.002-07:00

This Reader's Digest snippet from 2011 describes how candy makers stretched out the cocoa by adding air: "The price of cocoa is soaring, and candy makers are stretching ingredients by adding air. They say the chocolate is creamier, with fewer calories." Wonder if they're still doing it, and wonder if you can tell the difference when you put the bars in water?

Of course, some chocolate bars are made with lots of air bubbles, like the British aero bar. We floated one once, and had it spinning in nice circles.

Here's a Businessweek article with more info.

Gummi Gecko Tails

2013-04-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

One gecko went for a swim, and the other stayed dry. One gecko floated in water, showing off hidden air bubbles, and the other gecko kept its secrets. One gecko absorbed so much water it grew, and the other lay by the side of the pool. One gecko swam away (down the drain) and the other was forgotten in a bowl.

One gecko, sitting in a bowl for weeks, got its tail bent out of shape!

(For a few minutes, the tail stuck up at nearly a 45 degree angle. Sadly, after we placed it on a plate, gravity eventually took its course, and our gecko became flat once again.)

Multilingual Conversation Hearts

2013-04-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

It shouldn't be a surprise that conversation hearts are made for other languages. But when I opened my new bag of hearts for experiments, it took me a moment to realize that 1) the messages were different than usual and 2) I could still understand some of them because they were in Spanish. Hola, amigo!

How many can you understand?

Easter Candy Diet Coke Fountain

2013-03-31T00:07:00.001-07:00

I spent a whole afternoon trying different kinds of candy in Diet Coke geysers to see if anything could approach Mentos. I had OK luck with Sweethearts, and Sweet Tarts, which seem to have the right kind of surface (slightly pitted) but aren't heavy enough to drop immediately to the bottom of the bottle like Mentos do. Regular jelly beans were a failure--I think they're too smooth for the soda bubbles to form quickly on their surface. But one candy made me want to try again. Guess what we were doing all evening?

Here's are two nice Coke Zero geysers done with bumpy Nerd jelly beans.

Why do the bumpy Nerds create such a good geyser? My guess is that it's because they have a lot of extra surface area, because all those bumps stick out so much. That gives the soda bubbles even more space on which to form, and so the bubbles can form quickly.

So how do the bumpy Nerds compare to Mentos, geyser-wise? I tested Mentos, using the same amount of weight as I had with bumpy Nerds (10 g). Here was the result:
I had such high hopes, but the Mentos still won. This time.

By the way, when I used this experiment today I tried out the Steve Spangler Mentos Geyser Tube. (Steve Spangler is the person who popularized the Mentos/Diet Coke experiment in this video.) The tube works quite well, sending a fountain much higher than if you drop the Mentos in from a cardboard tube, and you're also far away from the mess so you're not nearly as likely to get Coke all over your clothes. Of course, there were drawbacks as well--once I forgot to screw the top on tightly, and the exploding soda pushed the tube right off of the bottle. Another time the bottle fell over when I pulled the trigger string (though this may be because I had to replace the pin, which I lost, with a nail which worked great except when it didn't). So, if you use the Steve Spangler tube, use it right and don't lose the pieces!

XKCD and Cadbury Eggs

2013-03-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

XKCD has its own version of Find Hidden Candy, using Cadbury Eggs. (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.)

Easter Chocolate Pudding Chromatography

2013-03-25T22:09:00.000-07:00

Mixing up some boxed chocolate pudding for my daughter's birthday party, I committed the same mistake as Matthew McConaughey in The Wedding Planner talking about brown M&M's--assuming that because it was chocolate, and that it was brown, that the brown color was all chocolate. (When we make chocolate pudding from scratch, with real chocolate, it's brown!) But a glance at the box told me otherwise--just like the coating on brown M&M's, Jell-O chocolate pudding has red, yellow, and blue food dye.

Naturally, I had to go looking for the dye. I wish I'd done the experiment before I mixed the pudding--diluting the pudding with milk made the colors harder to see. But I did get some color separation.
I don't know why I didn't see any blue. Maybe because the pudding was mixed with milk by the time I thought to test it, diluting the colors? Or maybe there just wasn't very much. There isn't much blue in M&M's.

We went ahead and used the chocolate pudding for my daughter's birthday party, turning "chocolate dirt pudding pots" with gummi worms and cookie crumbs into Easter egg hunting treats.

But my kids ended up not liking the pudding. Guess they're too used to the real thing.

Swollen Gummi Geckos

2013-03-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

More gummi fun with the gummi gecko my 7-year-old begged me to buy (at the hardware store of all places!) With all of that gelatin, our gummi gecko absorbed lots of water. Though it didn't double in length like a gummi worm, when we left it in water it sure swelled up! (One interesting thing: since this gecko floated, unlike our gummi worms, it still had a few areas on the spine that didn't actually get wet. See the knobbly back breaching the water like a prehistoric aquatic dinosaur?)

Fun Conversation Heart Experiments

2013-03-14T14:06:00.002-07:00

Check out the website at Inspiration Laboratories for some more experiments with conversation hearts, like testing them with baking soda, dissolving them in hot/cold water (I prefer to do this with M&Ms or something brightly colored that dissolves quickly, because you can see the reaction happen faster, but this certainly works), or using vinegar and baking soda to make the hearts dance. Fun ideas!

And thanks to Tricia at twobigtwolittle.com for blogging about the Candy Experiments book and linking to the Inspiration Laboratories site!

Ingredients and the Food Industry

2013-03-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

This well-prepared video talks about what the food industry can do to improve public health--but since they have no incentive to do so, what we can watch for on labeling and how we can make better decisions.

We've also noticed this kind of thing with our Find Hidden Candy experiment. Gummi fruit snacks are practically indistinguishable from gummi worms, except that they have more vitamins; "healthy" cereals can contain 20-30% sugar (while sugary cereals can contain more than 50% sugar); and one bottle of orange soda has as much sugar as 22 peppermint Lifesavers. Hidden candy, for sure!

Candy Experiments on Evening Magazine

2013-03-08T22:12:00.001-08:00

Evening Magazine got a Facebook tip about candy experiments, and came out to see what it was all about. We had a lot of fun demonstrating our experiments--especially the kids. They didn't have room for all my explanations, but most of it's on the website (or you can buy the book!)

Watch me and my children doing experiments here!

Floating Geckos

2013-03-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

When we saw the Sour Gummy Geckos in the hardware store, my 7-year-old demanded that we bring them home for experiments. First experiment: when we put one in water, why did it float?

Gummi gecko floating in water

Only when the gummi gecko had absorbed water and expanded could we see the reason it floated: tons of tiny air bubbles.

The bubbles are also probably the reason the candy is opaque, not transparent like most gummies.

Upcoming Candy Experiments Events in Seattle

2013-02-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

If you're in the Seattle area and you'd like to try some candy experiments, come join me!

Candy Experiments Launch Party
Saturday, March 2, 2 pm
Secret Garden Books, 2214 NW Market Street, Seattle, WA 98107
I'll demonstrate some of our favorite experiments, including the Warheads Acid Test and Find Hidden Candy, with time afterwards for questions and book signing.

Read Across America
Sunday, March 3, 3-5 pm
Park Place Books, 348 Parkplace Center Kirkland, WA 98033
I'll be joining Park Place Bookstore's Read Across America event with children's authors Lenore Look and Brenda Guiberson (whose books I highly recommend!)
Drop in any time and try some candy experiments at my signing table.

Science Fair Experiments

2013-02-20T12:34:00.000-08:00

When I signed books at the King's English in Salt Lake City, parents from a homeschool group told me that they had a science fair coming up, and that their children were excited to try candy experiments for it. Their excitement reminded me that, since it's science fair time, lots of families are looking for science fair ideas. Here are some ideas for elementary school candy experiment science projects based on experiments from my website and from my new book. Enjoy, and let me know if you have ideas of your own--with 70 candy experiments in my new book, the possibilities are endless!

For each experiment, think of a question to answer, then do your own research to see what answers you get. Remember to control the variables in your experiment: for instance, if you try chromatography in different liquids, don't change anything else like the size of the filter paper or the temperature of the liquid. Some project guidelines might ask you to form a hypothesis at the beginning of your project, meaning a prediction as to how it will turn out.

Lifesaver Lights
Life Savers flash when you crush them because they contain sugar and wintergreen oil. Can you find other candies that make flashes of light? Which work the best?
OR
What crushing method makes the best sparks for the Life Savers experiment? Chewing, crushing with pliers, smashing in a mortar and pestle, or something else?

The Incredible Growing Gummi Worm
Gummi candies that contains gelatin, such as gummi worms or most fruit snacks, swell up and absorb water. Which kind of gummi candy absorbs the most water? If you try this one, weigh each test piece of candy before you put it in water, then weigh it again after it has swelled to maximum size, about 2 days later. (Warning: by then the gummi candies are pretty fragile--you have to handle them carefully to make sure they don't break.)

The Mentos Geyser
As popularized by Steve Spangler, dropping Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke produces a sky-high fountain of soda. But why?

Invite your at-home scientist to investigate which kind of candy makes the best soda fountain and why. First, examine each kind of candy and compare differences. Then drop each sample into a cup of Diet Coke and compare the bubbles. Children should soon be able to see that the surface of the candy makes a big difference in the amount of bubbles you get.
OR
Test different kinds of soda to see which works best for the experiment. Have your children formulate a hypothesis about which soda will fountain the highest, then drop the same number of Mentos in each to test the hypothesis. Which sodas work the best? What ingredients do they have in common?

Acid Test
Sour candy contains acid. Which kind of candy is the most acidic? Make sure that you use the same method testing for all the candies: each sample should be dissolved in the same amount of water, such as 1/4 cup; the water should all be the same temperature (preferably warm); each sample should be tested after a set amount of time or allowed to dissolve completely.. If you use baking soda to see how much acid is in each candy, you'll have to use the same amount of baking soda for each test (1/4 tsp or less), and have a good way to measure which reaction is the biggest (you may want to video each test so you can compare the results again later). Ph test strips would be a more accurate way to measure the acidity.

To see how two dentists tested candy acidity, check out this article from the UAB School of Dentistry.

Color Separation (Chromatography)
Candy colors are formed by a mixture of dyes. So are the colors in many other things, including ballpoint pens and markers. Which kind of candy has the most dyes mixed together? If you test candies and markers that are the same color, do you get the same color separation? Do you get different results if you stand the chromatography paper in different liquids, such as salt water or alcohol?

Find Hidden Candy
You'll find "hidden candy," or sugar, in almost everything these days. Which kind of children's drink, or snack, or cereal, has the most or the least sugar? Does fruit juice or soda pop have more sugar? Does the cereal with the most sugar taste the best? (You'd have to ask volunteers to do taste-tests for that one.)

For more guidelines to good science fair projects, check out these websites:
-Successful Science Fair Projects by Lynn Bleeker
-Science Buddies project guide This website also has ideas and instructions for a variety of projects.
-"What Makes a Good Science Project?" by Bill Robertson

Fun with Popping Candy from Science Sparks

2013-02-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

A new experiment on Science Sparks tests what Fizz Wiz will do in oil, water, and vinegar. (Fizz Wiz must be about the same as Pop Rocks.) The results are interesting--they don't all pop! This looks like a great experiment to do with children who need to practice forming and testing a hypothesis.

Find this experiment at the Science Sparks posting, "What Makes Popping Candy Pop?"

Hearts Bobbing

2013-02-18T11:21:00.001-08:00

For those who missed the Hearts Bobbing instructions on ParentMap and Parenting.com, here is the full experiment.

To make conversation hearts bob, drop them in a bottle of club soda. As the carbon dioxide in the soda forms bubbles on the hearts, the hearts bob to the surface, only to sink again when the bubbles come off. If you put the lid back on the bottle, the hearts will bob for a few minutes. Once they reach the top and start to stay there, gently shake or tap the bottle to knock the bubbles off and put the hearts back in motion. You can also do this experiment by pouring the soda into a cup and adding the hearts, or by using clear soda pop instead of club soda.

A version of this photo appeared in the book Candy Experiments,
and is copyrighted by Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Happy Valentine's Day from Jelly Belly!

2013-02-14T03:00:00.000-08:00

When I saw these Jelly Belly Conversation Beans, I couldn't wait to try them out for Floating Letters, so I rushed home to put them in water. After the glaze with the printed logo got wet and started to loosen from the candy, I used a toothpick to gently poke through the glaze and tear off the piece with the letters. A few logos ripped in the process, but "LIKE" held together and floated nicely to the top.

Valentine's Day Experiment on ParentMap's blog

2013-02-12T22:14:00.001-08:00

I've shared instructions for a fun Valentine's Day candy experiment on the ParentMap blog. Find out how to make conversation hearts bob up and down!

"Buttery" Taste in Keebler Crackers?

2013-02-03T09:40:00.000-08:00

Since I started doing candy experiments, I read labels a lot more closely. Here's a new favorite from Keebler Multi-grain Club Crackers, which advertises that it has a "light, flaky, buttery taste, with the great taste of Multi-Grain." So I checked the ingredient label for butter. There isn't any. Instead, each cracker contains more than 10% "Soybean oil with TBHQ for freshness." And do you get any nutritional benefit from the whole grain in this "multi-grain" cracker? With more sugar per cracker than whole wheat flour, and less than 1 g fiber per 4-cracker serving, it looks to me like "multi-grain taste" is the only whole-grain benefit you enjoy.

Candy Experiments at KidsQuest Museum

2013-02-01T09:22:00.001-08:00

I'll be doing candy experiments at KidsQuest museum (Bellevue, WA) on Saturday at 11-12. Stop by and try experiments like finding "hidden candy" in the food you eat, see what happens when you drop a Warhead in water, and other fun science activities.

Marshmallow and Cherry Density Layer Cake

2013-01-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

By Susan Wells, Steve Spangler Science

This experiment mixes a little kitchen science, candy science and physical science. And the end result of this activity is delicious.

The cherries and marshmallows in this cake switch places, thanks to density.
To make a three-layer density cake, you will need the following materials:

Cake mix (flavor is up to you, we used Devil’s Cake)
Bag of small marshmallows
2 cans of cherry pie mix with whole cherries
Eggs
Oil
Water
Clear glass cake pan

Instructions:

Prepare cake batter per box directions.
Spray the bottom of the cake pan.
Cover the bottom of the pan with marshmallows.
Pour cake batter over the marshmallows.
Layer the cherry pie filing on top of the batter. Do this quickly, as the marshmallows will start to float up almost immediately.
Bake the cake according to box directions.

As the cake bakes, the marshmallows and cherries will switch places. As the marshmallows rise to the top, they will melt and become gooey. As the cherries fall to the bottom, they will disappear, along with the pie filing.

How does this work?
The answer lies in density. Density is defined as mass divided by volume or the amount of stuff in a certain amount of space. Marshmallows are a mixture of sugar and gelatin, puffed up with air. They are much less dense than the cherries. The marshmallows are less dense than the cake batter too, so the marshmallows rise up through the batter. The cherries are more dense than the batter, so they fall to the bottom.

This experiment was developed by former teacher and Story Time Slime speaker Julie Gintzler as a 100-day activity with her class. She lined 100 marshmallows on the bottom of the cake pan as part of the celebration.

Susan Wells is a social media specialist and blogger for Steve Spangler Science. She is a mother of two girls who loves to find the learning in everything. Susan also runs the science fair and science clubs at her girls’ school. Follow Susan on Twitter and check out all of Steve Spangler’s educational boards on Pinterest and scientific posts on Facebook.