Today I did some Christmas science with my 4 year olds!
I explained that scientists ask questions and then try to find the answers. Today the question was,
"How do we make the stripes come off of the candy cane?"
We put on our scientist hats and pulled out some candy canes. The first candy cane went into a container of water.
We took guesses as to whether the candy canes would dissolve in vegetable oil (second container from the left), corn syrup (3rd container), and rubbing alcohol (last container).
It surprised me that the rubbing alcohol took as long as it did to remove the red from the candy cane. According to my husband (a chef), alcohol actually has preservation properties, and therefore the candy cane did not dissolve as quickly as it did in water.
It took about 5 minutes for the one in the water to look like this:
And of course we had to test how long it would take our saliva to remove the stripes!
Every hard working scientist deserves a candy cane!
No comments:
Post a Comment