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 explore their own ideas.

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

Science Fair Experiments

2012-02-24T12:34:00.000-08:00

It's science fair season, and my kids are interested in participating. They're both excited to do some experiments with Find Hidden Candy (and no, I didn't limit their choices to candy experiments!), so we'll be looking at lots of labels to find out how much sugar is in our food.

Here are some other ways candy experiments can be adapted for elementary school science fair ideas. 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.

-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

Candy Cheerios

2012-02-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

It's not just chocolate and marshmallows that are showing up in breakfast cereals. Now Cheerios is producing "Dulce de Leche" flavored Cheerios. Surprisingly, with 6 grams of sugar in a 27 gram serving, these are less than 1/4 sugar. There's more sugar per serving in both the "Yogurt" and the "Fruity" cheerios than the candy-flavored cheerios.*

*You can see nutritional information at www.cheerios.com. Kudos to Cheerios for making their nutritional information so easy to look up.

USA Science and Engineering Festival

2012-02-21T18:13:00.000-08:00

Join us for the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C.! We'll be demonstrating candy experiments at the Finale Expo on April 28-29. Kids will love learning about hidden candy in different foods, dropping Warheads into baking soda water to watch them bubble, making "M&M Rainbows" with chromatography, and competing to see who can sink a marshmallow.

Besides candy experiments, you'll be amazed at the science activities you can do. At the first USASEF, we built model boats, tested paper airplanes in the NASA wind tunnel, extracted strawberry DNA, admired Purdue University's solar car, watched Bill Nye spread out a solar sail, and used remote controlled robots to play soccer. This year you'll also see stage shows like the Mythbusters' forays into the unexplained, demonstrations of physics in the movies, and presentations by scientists in all different fields.

Volunteers
We need all the help we can get! Please consider signing up for a two-hour shift to help us teach candy experiments at our booth. You'll learn experiments you can use later at home, you'll make a lot of kids smile, and you'll get a free Candy Experiments t-shirt if you sign up before April 1. Email me if you're interested; I'd love to hear from you!

The Step-counting Choc-o-meter

2012-02-17T16:09:00.000-08:00

You deserve chocolate! That's the premise of the step-counting Choc-O-Meter we saw in the hospital gift shop. According to the packaging, 4000 steps gets you one chocolate bar. They don't say how many calories you burn in your 4000 steps, and have neglected to mention the size of the chocolate bar you've earned, which I'd think would be important information. The calculators at gearedtobefit.com tell me that my 4000 steps will only burn 96 calories, less than a quarter of the calories in my Theo's 3 oz chocolate bar of choice.

Still, this product is a good way to make us think about the relationship between the food we eat and the calories we burn. If more Americans understood how long it takes to burn off excess calories, we might be able to tackle this nationwide obesity problem.

Peeps Hearts that Grow

2012-02-11T21:09:00.000-08:00

For Valentine's day, I blew up my Peeps hearts in a vacuum jar (as much of a vacuum as you can get with a FoodSaver kitchen appliance, anyway.) As the air was pumped out of the jar, the air bubbles inside the marshmallow heart expanded, pushing out the sides of the heart. When I let the air back into the jar, the heart collapsed.

Smarties in the Snow

2012-02-08T16:12:00.000-08:00

I loved this snowman, which some friends decorated with Smarties. I was interested to see that the Smarties had sunk well into the snow, in some cases over an inch. Was this because the dissolving sugar caused the snow to melt? We'll have to experiment with ice cubes.

Sugar Crystal Snow

2012-02-03T16:17:00.000-08:00

While I was hanging ornaments in water for sugar coating, the bottom of the bottle soon became covered by a layer of loose sugar crystals. After I removed the ornaments, the crystals were stirred up, swirling gently around the bowl before they sank like snowflakes. It was a sugar crystal snowstorm!

Lettuce Straw

2012-02-01T10:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my 8-year-old discovered that the stalks of romaine lettuce leaves were hollow. Immediately she peeled off the rest of the leafy matter, got a glass, and started sucking up water through her new lettuce straw.I guess it only counts as a candy experiment if, like my daughter, you think lettuce is sweet, but it was really fun. We've turned candy canes into straws by pulling out the middles, and now lettuce--wonder what other foods would work?

Melted Mentos

2012-01-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

Heating Mentos in the oven turned them into hollow soup-bowl shells.

My kids were melting several kinds of candy at the same time, so the red color is probably from Jolly Ranchers or something. Remember to line your pan with tinfoil when you're melting candy into puddles!

New Blog Post on 247moms.com

2012-01-13T22:48:00.000-08:00

Check out my new blog post "Candy Experiments for the New Year" at 247moms.com to see how doing candy experiments can help you accomplish your New Year's goals!

Kids and Candy Temptation

2012-01-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

This article in a Harvard Business School newsletter briefly describes a study done on kids and candy. Children were asked to complete certain paper-folding tasks, with some children being promised candy and soda afterwards and some not promised anything. Surprisingly, the children who were promised the candy reward performed worse than the other children, even though there was a bribe at the end, supposedly because the thought of the candy was so distracting they couldn't focus as well on their tasks. The article expands the idea to adults tempted to spend time online during work hours, which can also be distracting. The takeaway? For kids, promising candy can be a distraction instead of a motivating bribe. And for me? Maybe I need to limit my email time.

Sugar Crystal Christmas Ornaments

2011-12-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

After seeing Timothy Horn's carriage coated with sparkling sugar crystals, I was inspired to create my own. I hung these pipe cleaners in sugar water (2 parts sugar, 1 part water, boiled until sugar is dissolved, then placed in a jar) and left them there a week.

The results? Sparkly ornaments pretty enough to hang on our tree.

For instructions on making sugar crystals, see the Exploratorium's rock candy recipe.

Impressing kids with Candy Canes

2011-12-21T18:12:00.000-08:00

OK, it was just one kid. But boy, did his eyes go wide after I melted a candy cane just enough to make it swoop side to side. As I blogged last year, I made a zig zag form out of a strip of folded tinfoil, placed the candy cane on top, and put it in a 250 F oven for 5 minutes. (My young friend had a hard time waiting that long, and I was worried it wouldn't be ready before he ran out of patience. The two-hour floating conversation hearts are probably not the right experiment for him!) The candy cane ended up as kind of an M shape--I wish I'd taken a picture!

Candy Cane Stripes

2011-12-14T21:07:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder how to make stripes at the bottom of a bowl of water? All you need is a candy cane.

Unwrap the candy cane, put it in a shallow dish of water, and let it sit for several minutes. The stripes will slowly dissolve into the water and spread across the bottom of the bowl.

Candy Experiments in Columbus Parent

2011-12-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

I knew this article was coming out, but didn't think to look it up until today. I'm glad I did. It starts off with kids trying out the oil test, and leads to my favorite line in the article, when the kids are asked if there's oil in candy: “No. Who puts oil in candy?” Emily said. “That’s gross.”You can read the entire article "Cooking with Kids: Candy Science" at Columbus Parents online.

Time article about sugar in cereal

2011-12-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

My favorite foods for the Find Hidden Candy experiment are soda (because there's SO much sugar) and breakfast cereal. At the USA Science and Engineering Festival, I chose a box of Honey Smacks cereal because it had by far the most sugar: more than 50%. Twizzlers, by comparison, are only 42% sugar (and contain flour as well--does that make them healthier than Honey Smacks?)Now an article in Time points out the appalling amounts of sugar in many breakfast cereals, and compares it with other foods. One cup of Honey Smacks has more sugar than a Twinkie (and not much food value--those things are like tiny air-filled balloons!) Forty-four cereals have more sugar per cup than Chip's Ahoy cookies.So if you serve cereal for breakfast, check the sugar content when you buy. Even "healthy" cereals like Frosted Mini Wheats have more than you think (about 20%). And if your kids beg for sugary cereal, think of serving it for dessert.

Gift Ideas

2011-12-07T10:38:00.000-08:00

Do you have young scientists in your family? Here are some gifts I'm considering this holiday season.

--Doyle and Fossey Science Detective Books: Think about Encyclopedia Brown doing science experiments, and you get Drake Doyle and Nell Fossey. These fifth grade science detectives use real science to solve mysteries like why is the garbage can burping, who faked the ghost in the cemetery, and who wrote the mysterious love letter (I especially liked this one because it uses chromatography.) Each story has instructions for an experiment kids can try themselves. With a degree in microbiology, years of lab experience, and several children's books in publication, Torrey knows both her science and her audience. My daughter enjoyed these books, and I'm wondering if my son is ready for them.

--Potato Chip Science: I haven't tried this one out yet because I hid it until it's time to wrap presents. (Don't tell my kids!) According to the package, it has instructions and equipment for several experiments including a potato clock. If nothing else, the packaging is genius--they've enclosed it in a crackly plastic potato chip bag.

--Candy Experiments Kit: If I get surprised by a sudden need for a holiday gift (somehow I can never tell when get-togethers and playdates are going to erupt into spontaneous gift exchanges), I'll package up some candy experiment kits. To make your own kit, print out the set of 8 experiment cards from my Printables page, which includes experiments for Life Saver Lights, Pop Rocks, Floating Letters, Acid Test, and others. Tape the appropriate candy to each card, wrap it up in a nice box, and decorate with a bow. Nobody'll ever know it was a last minute scramble.

Holiday Experiments: Oldies but Goodies

2011-12-06T11:14:00.001-08:00

I just saw that my guest blog post for sensationalhomeschooling.com last year was reposted at the blog Our Journey Through Autism. I wrote about chromatography and melting candy canes. Since the blog post became unavailable soon after I published it, it's fun to see it up again.

Last year I posted these really fun candy cane experiments:
-Candy Cane Countdown #3: Bubbling Candy Canes
-Candy Cane Countdown #2: Mutant Candy Canes
-Candy Cane Countdown #1: Rubber Bandy Canes

The Rubber Bandy Canes were one of my favorite experiments ever, and I just bought two boxes of Bob's candy canes so we can do them again. Maybe this year we'll even be able to hollow some out.

Melting Gummies

2011-12-06T11:05:00.001-08:00

Here's a blog post by a mom who melted gummi bears in the microwave, then gave her son q-tips to play in the bubbling goo before it hardened. Looks really fun (but supervise closely if you do this at home, because melted candy can be very hot.)

Sugar Crystals on Display

2011-12-02T21:28:00.000-08:00

I've made plenty of sugar crystals in the course of creating candy experiments, and there will be sugar crystal experiments in the Candy Experiments book coming out next October. But I never knew you could actually do anything with sugar crystals until I saw Timothy Horn's sculpture, Mother-Load.

Horn's noticed a backlash against sugar in public opinion in the last few years, as experts warn that sugar is contributing to the rise of obesity. "Sugar has been getting a bad rap," he says. So his art works, such as this sugar-coated carriage Mother-Load, seek to present sugar as something beautiful.

Horn created Mother-Load in recognition of Alma Spreckles, a rags-to-riches 1900's socialite who married a San Francisco sugar baron. Horn made a form from plywood and steel, adding ornamental details made from scrunched aluminum foil and carved foam. But the most striking ornamentation comes from the sugar crystals, bought in bulk at a Chinese grocery. Horn used an acrylic glaze to coat the entire surface of the carriage in gem-like crystals of all sizes. Finally, Horn coated the carriage in amber-colored shellac, making the final product glow like honey. A sign in museum where the carriage is currently displayed warns visitors to not lick the artwork!

Mother-Load will be displayed at the Bellevue Arts Museum through Dec 31. You can also see more pictures at Timothy Horn's website.

Sour Cotton Candy Acid Test Video

2011-11-29T18:57:00.000-08:00

Here's another fun thing to acid test: sour cotton candy. Since the cotton candy sugar strands are so thin, they dissolve almost instantly, releasing the sour acid to react with the baking soda. The result? LOTS of bubbles.

Candy Experiments in Space!

2011-11-18T22:57:00.001-08:00

No, I didn't jump on a spaceship (too bad). But here's a video of a candy experiment in space, in which a NASA astronaut sticks candy corns in a floating ball of water to demonstrate how surfactants work. It's pretty cool. You can read the whole article here.

Thanks to Samira Kawash at www.candyprofessor.com for sending me the link!

Why you shouldn't broil your candy

2011-11-17T15:19:00.000-08:00

What your melting experiment looks like when you use the broiler because your oven's bake function broke.

M&M's math

2011-11-11T11:30:00.001-08:00

Lots of bloggers write about graphing Skittles or M&M's. This pdf shows the variety of M&M's colors with percentages. I was surprised that brown (at 13%) was almost as common as red (13%) and yellow (14%), since I recently opened a small bag of M&M's that didn't have any browns at all. Thanks to Rachel of Momma Owl's Lab for posting the link to this pdf on her blog, as well as a great M&M's graphing experiment.