TALLAHASSEE (WTXL) - In honor of Halloween coming up this weekend, Max Tsaparis is getting us prepared in a special edition of Tsaparis Tscience. Halloween’s right around the corner and that means in just a few short days, your kids will be running around the house, having a bunch of candy, getting some cavities, and just being hopped up on sugar. But what if we could use some of the leftover candy they got trick-or-treating in the name of science? What you'll need is a white plate, skittles, gummy bears, some water, and an empty cup.
For the first experiment, we want to take our skittles and pour them on the plate. Then you want to organize the skittles by color on the plate. You can organize them in groups of four or six then take a glass of water and slowly pour it on your plate. You want to just coat the bottom of the skittles in the layer of water. After you wait a couple of minutes, you'll notice the skittles start dissolving and the colors mix in with the water. Now, why don't we see the color in the water mix with the other colors? It's because each individual skittle has a wax coating holding in that color and it's the wax that doesn't allow the colors to mix together.
Next, we’re going to take our gummy bears and we're going to toss a few of them in the water. Then we'll check back in with these suckers in about a day. You'll take your spoon, and you'll just fish them out. The gummy bears started off at 3/4" in size. Then we put them in the water and they've grown up to double in size to an inch and a half. It's all due to a process called osmosis. An area of high water molecules, comprised of solely water, flows into an area of low water molecules, which in this case in the gummy bears. Given enough time, this will cause the low water molecule content to increase, which stretches out the gelatin causing it to grow.
