Snowman Candy Experiments

Candy decorations in a snowman not only brighten it up--they create a candy laboratory!



When candy touches the snow, the sugar starts to dissolve and mix with the melting snow. Since sugar water has a lower freezing point than pure water, it stays liquid, spreading colored streaks through the snow and melting whatever it touches.



The sugar water even melts the snow beneath the candy, causing it to tunnel downward.



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The colored candy solution also spreads outward. Just as water soaks up paper towels, the candy water spreads up the spaces between the close-connected snow crystals, giving this snowman an orange halo around the eyes. Capillary action at work!

Frost feathers and candy frost

When our snow melted slightly in the sunlight, then refroze overnight, it made beautiful ice feathers. Apparently these hoarfrost* ice crystals are made from single tiny columns of ice, but since some of them grow at angles to the others, they create a feathered shape.

Here’s a way to make candy "frost" crystals in your kitchen from CANDY EXPERIMENTS BOOK 2:
Mix 1 tbps water with 3 tbsp xylitol, heating and stirring until the xylitol dissolves completely. Pour half the solution into a second bowl and put both bowls aside for several hours. The thin film of xylitol should crystallize into feathery patterns.


I also found a fun experiment for growing your own hoarfrost crystals at Snowcrystals.com http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/frost/frost.htm

*Hoarfrost (a new vocab word for me!): A deposit of interlocking ice crystals (hoar crystals) formed by direct deposition on objects

http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Ice_feathers

Candy Autumn Leaves

Instructions
Place candy on a flat plate or dish. Use a bulb syringe to draw the outline of the puddle you want to create.



Once the design is complete, gently add water to the middle of the design and watch the colors spread.





What's Happening:
Colored candy such as M&M's and Runts are covered with shells of colored sugar. When you put them in water, the colored sugar starts to dissolve, creating a dense sugar solution. This solution sinks and starts to spread into a colored puddle. If two puddles of similar density collide, neither puddle can push the other out of the way. Instead, they stack up against each other as they expand outwards, forming distinct bars of color.

Don't let soda companies buy their way out of a Seattle tax!

Soda companies have banded together to sponsor and pay $20 million for an initiative campaign to forbid local governments from imposing taxes on soda and other food items. Aside from $20,000 donated by Seattle small businesses, the movement is funded entirely by the soda industry. They are taking this action because Seattle imposed a soda tax. The campaign for the initiative says that if such taxes are imposed, it should be at a state level and not a local level which puts unfair burdens on local businesses. It’s laughable coming from an industry that used our initiative system in 2010 to overturn a legislative action to tax soda across the state in 2010. The soda industry has used these actions in other states as well to block local taxes, protecting themselves from anything that's not on a state level. Since soda is one of the leading causes of obesity in this country, soda companies are right to be worried. Vote NO on 1634 in Washington https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/soda-companies-spend-7-million-more-on-initiative-to-block-local-taxes/

Candy Flag

Mini M&Ms on a flat surface form a flag as they dissolve.

To repeat at home: arrange mini M&Ms on a small flat rectangular surface with raised edges. (This one is a lid from a plastic resealable container.) Using an eyedropper, gently drip water into the middle of the rectangle and let it spread out. Make sure that you are not squirting the water in one direction or another--if the water is flowing in any direction, it will push the dissolving color that direction. Above all, do not stir!

Because the candies are regularly spaced, the dissolving solutions push against each other as they spread, creating the stripes.

Dancing conversation hearts

The rough surface of a conversation heart provides perfect places for bubbles to form (nucleation sites). When the heart is dropped in club soda, the carbon dioxide dissolved in the water forms bubbles that make the hearts rise. At the surface, some of the bubbles pop or get shaken off, making the hearts sink again.



Try this with Brach's hearts in club soda, or Necco conversation hearts in Sprite.

M&M Decoration Eyes

It's easy to turn M&M's into candy eyeballs.

Place M&M's in a bowl, and pour enough water to submerge 3/4 of the M&M's.
(The tops should still be above water.)


Let the colors start to dissolve.


When the colored shell has dissolved, leaving only white color with a circle on top, remove from the water.


Let the M&M's dry.


Apply to your favorite craft!