Tag: candy science

All Candy. All Science. All FUN – Make Your Halloween Scientifically Spooky!

Image Source: Pixabay.com

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. That’s right, next week is Halloween which means – All Candy. All Science. All FUN! 

Candy experiments are a great way to use up all of that candy & still enjoy all the sweetness Halloween has to offer.  Why not play with your candy? Any seasoned trick or treater knows that his loot is full of candy that brings lots of unwrapping and stirring and sticking things together – it’s one of the important parts of the trick or treating experience. We love candy experiments because they can teach basic science lessons about topics such as density, dissolving, and nutrition. Listed below are just a few ideas to get started. Have fun, and as always, let curiosity be your guide! 

Here’s A Few of our Favorite!

Acid Test: This experiment tests for the acid often found in sour candy. 

Chocolate Bloom: Chocolate is made of cocoa butter, cocoa solids, and other ingredients that have been mixed together. Can you take them apart? 

Color Separation (Chromatography): You know candy is colored with artificial dye. To see the different dyes for yourself, try this. 

Density Rainbow: Sugar water is denser than water—the more sugar, the denser. This experiment shows you how to layer different densities into a rainbow.

Dissolving Hot/Cold: See if candy dissolves faster in hot or cold water. 

Hidden Candy: Most candy is made from sugar, corn syrup, and flavorings. These ingredients are used to sweeten lots of different foods. Can you find the “hidden candy” in other varieties of food you eat? 

Lifesaver Lights: Do wintergreen Lifesavers really make a spark in the dark?

Sink/Float Most: candy sinks in water, because sugar is denser than water.  But some will float. Why? 

Oil Test: If you thought your candy was all sugar, think again. Many chewy candies also contain oil. This experiment uses heat to let you see the oil for yourself. 

Pop Rocks: What’s the secret ingredient in the candy that crackles? 

Sticky You: know candy can cling to your fingers—but how sticky can you make it?  

For step-by-step instructions and more information about these experiments, visit www.candyexperiments.com. 

The fun doesn’t stop there! Check out these additional resources on ways to make your Halloween scientifically spooky! 

FUN Science with Halloween Candy!

Check out our updated list of spooky science Halloween Activities here! 
Worried about having too much Halloween candy laying around? Here’s a little science you can do with your kids’ haul—or your own!

Chances are if you’ve got kids they’re going to want to go trick-or-treating. This means they’ll end up loaded with way more candy than you’d want them to actually eat. What could you do with the rest? Well, you could donate it, you could take it to a candy buyback program or you could do a little science with it! Here are a few ideas from Candyexperiments.com.

Lifesaver Lights
Here’s a simple one. Grab some wintergreen flavored Life Saver candies, stand in a dark room, face a mirror and chew them with your mouth open. You’ll see flashes of light that result from electrons in the candy; these are more easily visible thanks to the wintergreen flavoring.

 

 

Pop Rocks
Ever tried pouring some Pop Rocks into a glass of water? If you do, you’ll find that it’s a pretty effervescent experience.

 

 

 

Chocolate Bloom
By rapidly heating and cooling a piece of chocolate, you can gradually seperate it into its component parts. This results in white streaks and spirals called chocolate bloom. You can even still eat the chocolate once this is done—the texture might be a little unusual but it’s still perfectly edible!

 

Density Rainbow
Skittles are both delicious and colorful – here’s a way to really help that color shine. By using different quantities of various colored Skittles and the principle that sugar makes water more dense, you can create a liquid rainbow. This is one of the tougher experiments to try; make sure you pour the melted Skittles very slowly otherwise the different colors will just mix together.

 

Color Separation- Chromotography
Even if a piece of candy is only one color, that color can actually contain a variety of differently colored dyes. By dissolving candy coloring into water then slowly dripping that water down a piece of paper, it’s possible to see all those various colors. This is an easy experiment and the results are striking. Try it with brown M&Ms!