It’s no secret that opposites attract.  People with opposite personalities end up as best friends; flavors that (rationally) shouldn’t work together are absolutely delicious (sugar in your spaghetti sauce, sweet and sour sauce, etc.); dogs and cats live together in the same home…

OPPOSITES ATTRACT!  And this rule is the foundation for most chemical reactions!

This week, I am going to show you how to create sparks within your mouth using nothing but a piece of candy.

Don’t worry parents!  I promise no children will spontaneously combust during this activity!

The first thing we are going to do is review the four basic concepts of science:

If you have been following this blog at all, you should be very aware of how these four main concepts can be found throughout the kitchen.  But this week, we are going to dig a little deeper into the ATOM to learn how to create sparks in your mouth with only a piece of candy.  So let’s get started:

Each ATOM is made up of different amounts of three different (smaller) objects:

PROTONS – these guys are positively charged

ELECTRONS – these guys are the opposite of protons… they are NEGATIVELY charged

and NEUTRONS – these guys have NO charge at all!

For our purposes, we are going to look at our oppositely charged friends – the protons and electrons.

IT’S TIME TO START SPARKING!

Since all ATOMS contain (most of the time) an equal number of protons and electrons, groups of these ATOMS (molecules) have no charge at all.  This includes sugar molecules too!

However, something interesting happens when you crush large sugar crystals with your teeth…

HALF OF THE CRUSHED CRYSTALS CONTAIN MORE ELECTRONS THAN THE OTHER HALF!

This means that you have a higher DENSITY of little crystals in your mouth that are positively charged (more protons) and negatively charged (more electrons.)  And, since opposites attract, these extra electrons start to jump off of their crystals and DIFFUSE towards the crystals with more protons!

SO WHAT?

Well, the movement of electrons from one place to another is the definition of a little thing we like to call…

ELECTRICITY!

As these electrons jump towards the protons in the sugar crystals, they travel through the air within your mouth.  And, most of the air that we breathe is made up of a particular ATOM called nitrogen.

When electrons smash into Nitrogen ATOMS you get a SPARK!

This is the same thing that happens during a lightning strike as well (only with many more moving electrons!)

LET’S SUM THIS UP…

If you bite down into a hard candy that contains wintergreen oil (Wint-O-Green Lifesavers are great) you will see sparks!  Naturally, you will want your eyes to adjust to the darkness before you try this one.  You will want to sit in a darkened room for a few minutes and close your eyes to speed up the process.  And, if you are worried about your teeth, you can smash the candy with a hammer (just don’t hit a finger instead!)

WHY WINTERGREEN OIL?

There is a molecule within wintergreen oil that has a special property when it is exposed to light.  This property is called fluorescence (“floor-ess-sense.”)   A molecule that has this property acts like a sponge towards light – it soaks it up, stores it for a brief moment, and when there is no more light to absorb it gives off all that light in one big burst!

So when that little spark takes place as electrons smash into nitrogen ATOMS, the wintogreen oil absorbs a lot of the light that is given off, stores it for a millisecond, and releases it throughout your mouth.

Remember, you are not creating any light energy in your mouth at all!  The molecules within the oil are simply soaking them up and releasing them in one quick burst!  Much like ATOMS, light energy also follows the LAW OF CONSERVATION beautifully as no energy is being created or destroyed, only moved around!

Candies have a lot of cool properties we will explore in these next few posts.  Check back next week for another cool experiment you can run at home after a trip through the candy aisle…

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

Last week, you got a crash course in the main sweetener of most cold drinks – high fructose corn syrup. This sweetener is created within corn syrup through the rearrangement of ATOMS within its glucose molecules to form a different sugar molecule – fructose.

And since fructose is TWICE as sweet as glucose, this rearrangement converts corn syrup into the super sweet “high fructose corn syrup.”

Okay.  That is enough review for now.  Well, maybe just one more thing…

You may only need a couple of these four main concepts of science this week!  So let’s get to work!

BE CERTAIN TO READ THE LABELS

If you read the ingredients in a can of regular Coke, you probably will read that it contains around 41 grams of sugar (aka – sucrose.)

(To give you an idea of how much sugar this really is, try to imagine pouring out the table sugar within 18 packets you typically find on the tables of restaurants.  I’m not kidding here.  I really meant to say 18 packets!)

You will NOT find the same ingredient within a can of Diet Coke.  So where does the sweetness come from?

Well, scientists have created molecules that are much more sweet than table sugar OR high fructose corn syrup.  One of these molecules, ASPARTAME (“asp-ur-tame”),  is nearly 200 times as sweet as table sugar!

So…  you only need a small pinch of aspartame within your Diet Coke to equal the sweetness within the 18 packets of sugar within the regular Coke.

POP QUIZ TIME!

If both cans you are observing are the same size AND contain the same amount of liquid (they should), which of the two would have the most ATOMS?

If you said the regular Coke, you are correct!

Remember, the Diet Coke only has a pinch of sweetener as compared to the regular Coke.  In fact, you can test this very easily by weighing both cans.  The regular Coke will weigh a lot more because of all its extra sugar.  This means there are far more ATOMS within that can of regular Coke.

What happens to objects that are less DENSE than water when you drop them (gently) in a container of water?

Objects that are more DENSE than water will SINK when placed within a container of water.

I could go into why this happens in great detail; however, I believe you would find it about as interesting as reading your tax forms.

MAKE A PREDICTION

What do you believe will happen to both cans when you drop them into a sink-full of water?

Which one will float?  Which one will sink?  Will they BOTH sink?

Okay.  Ready?  Go ahead and drop the cans into the water.

Unless you filled up your sink with ocean water, you should have noticed that the regular Coke sinks to the bottom while the Diet Coke floats on the surface.

TWO THINGS ARE GOING ON HERE

First, the extra ATOMS increase the DENSITY of the regular Coke, which causes it to sink to the bottom.

Second, both cans contain a small amount of empty space once they are filled and sealed up.  This “bubble” of air acts like an inflatable raft for both cans; however, the extra ATOMS within the regular Coke make the can too heavy to stay afloat (unlike the Diet Coke.)

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that the scientific name of table sugar is SUCROSE.  In addition to sucrose, there is a long list of other types of sugars each with its own unique characteristics:

GLUCOSE (also known as dextrose)  – Glucose is the most common form of sugar that most organisms break down to create chemical energy.  It is made up of six Carbon ATOMS, 12 Hydrogen ATOMS, and six Oxygen ATOMS.

FRUCTOSE (also known as levulose) – Fructose has the very same amount and kinds of ATOMS within each of its molecules.  However, these ATOMS are bound together in a different way than glucose. This is the sweetest of all the sugars.

This means that a teaspoon of glucose and a teaspoon of fructose would have the same DENSITY!

LACTOSE – Lactose is the sugar that can be found in milk and is less sweet than the other three sugars we have discussed so far.

So far we have already mentioned two of the four basic concepts of science:

LET’S GET TO WORK ON DIFFUSION and the LAW OF CONSERVATION

If you ever looked on the side of a soda can (or nearly any other prepackaged sweetened food product) you probably read one of its ingredients:

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP

What is this super sweet syrup and what is it doing in so many foods?

The secret lies in the ATOMS of both glucose and fructose.  Since both of these sugar molecules contain the same amount and type of ATOMS, scientists have learned how to DIFFUSE another chemical into ordinary corn syrup (yes… much of our sugar comes from corn!) in order to rearrange many glucose ATOMS into fructose ATOMS.

And since fructose is TWICE as sweet as glucose, you have now created a “high fructose corn syrup.”

SO WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH ALL THIS FRUCTOSE?

Well, it is important to know that fructose molecules tend to change their ATOMS around a lot when they are dissolved in different liquids.

Now all this rearrangement doesn’t destroy any ATOMS within fructose, nor does it create any new ATOMS to make the molecule any sweeter.  This fact follows the LAW OF CONSERVATION perfectly!

In fact, one of the arrangements these ATOMS make happens to be the sweetest of all the fructose molecules AND tends to exist very well in cold and acidic fluids.

Hmmm…. What drink is cold, sweet, AND acidic?  Hmmm…..

Cold drinks regularly use high fructose corn syrups instead of table sugar (sucrose) because you only have to use 1/2 the amount of syrup to obtain the same amount of sweetness!  This saves the makers of cold drinks a lot of money without sacrificing the taste of their product.

Now that you have a good understanding of the syrupy sweetness inside your cold drinks, I think it’s time we ran a little experiment.  Check back next week to see how we can use this knowledge to run a simple test.  If you want to play along, all you’ll need is a can of regular Coke, a can of Diet Coke, and a sink-full of water.  Stay tuned…

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

There are many different kinds of sugar that are available to the cook.  A simple trip through the baking aisle in your local grocery store should prove this to you:  table sugar, brown sugar, liquid sugar, sugar substitute, and another well-known sweet delight…

POWDERED SUGAR

Powdered sugar is nothing more than ordinary table sugar crystals (also known as sucrose) that have been ground down into a powder.  Nothing fancy about that at all.

Powdered sugar is typically found in very smooth icings and frostings on our favorite desserts due to its very fine texture. Now there is a very simple experiment you can run at home involving powdered sugar.  If you have any in your kitchen, try stirring a teaspoon of powdered sugar into a glass of cold water.  Go on.  I’ll wait…

In fact, while I wait why don’t I take a moment to direct you towards the four basic concepts of science which will be discussed in the near future:

Okay.  Did you get a chance to mix up some powdered sugar water?  If you did, you probably discovered something rather odd.  Most of the powder clumped up into gummy blobs in your cup!  This isn’t what happens whenever you add table sugar to water!  Normally, table sugar sinks to the bottom and dissolves with a little stirring.

SO WHAT IS GOING ON?

If you read the ingredients on most powdered sugar containers you will find that a small amount of corn starch has been added.  Why?  If you recall from our previous discussion on starch, this amazing molecule acts like a tiny sponge whenever water is nearby.  In fact, it DIFFUSES water into itself much faster than the sugar!

So when you place powdered sugar into cold water, it is the corn starch inside the sugar that globs up and forms those gummy blobs in the fluid!

SOMETHING OLD… SOMETHING NEW…

You have learned from our study of strawberries and cakes that sugar molecules have no problem dissolving easily into water.  In fact, you also learned how brown sugar by itself or in cookies can DIFFUSE water into the environment very easily.

But something happens when you crush a sugar crystal into a powder…

IT’S TIME FOR A POP QUIZ!

If you were able to weigh a single sugar crystal and then crush it into a powder, would the weight of all the crushed powder change from the original weight of the sugar crystal?

If you said there would not be any change in weight, you are correct!  This follows the LAW OF CONSERVATION since the same number of ATOMS can be found within the sugar crystal AND its powdered form.

This means there is more SURFACE AREA around the powdered sugar as compared to the sugar crystals.  Surface area is defined as the total amount of material that can be measured around a particular object.  Confused?  Perhaps this will help:

Imagine having a large ball of clay in your hand and counting how many tiny beads you could stick around its surface.  Easy, right?  Now imagine tearing that clay ball into several smaller balls and recounting the number of tiny beads it would take to cover their surfaces.

The number of beads to cover ALL of the smaller balls of clay would be MUCH larger than the number around the single large ball!

Now let’s apply this to our powdered sugar. If you take large (I know they don’t look large, but work with me here…) sugar crystals and crush them into a powder, both the large crystal AND the powder contains an equal amount of ATOMS because none of them were destroyed.

All of this crushing removes some of the tiny spaces between the individual sugar grains.  This means that more atoms of sugar can fit next to each other; therefore, a teaspoon of powdered sugar is more DENSE than a teaspoon of table sugar.

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

Last week, we looked at the basic process by which we get sugar and molasses.  However, these are not the ONLY types of sugar that we tend to come across in our pantries and recipe books, is it?

This week we are going to look at one type of sugar that we find in many of our foods that require a little sweetness…

BROWN SUGAR

If you read last week’s post on the production of sugar, you might be able to guess HOW brown sugar can be created.  What you may not know is what to do when this popular sweetener turns into a solid rock inside your kitchen.  We’ll look at both of these items today.  But first, let’s review the four basic concepts of science:

FIRST, THE EASY PART

The creation of brown sugar is not very difficult at all.  First of all, you already know that to get sugar crystals out of a sugar cane plant you have to crush, boil, and spin its juices.  The solid pieces that remain from the spinning of this fluid are the sugar that you and I add to our chocolate chip cookie recipes.  And the fluid that spins away from this raw sugar is a syrupy solution called molasses.

Well, the natural color of molasses is a deep, rich brown.  So do you want to take a guess as to how the naturally white, solid raw sugar gets turned into BROWN SUGAR?

Yep!  Brown sugar is nothing more than ordinary table sugar with a small amount of molasses mixed together.

NOW THE TRICKY PART

Unless you are making cookies, BBQ sauces, or baked beans you probably don’t use a lot of brown sugar every day.   This means your brown sugar is lying around your shelves for long periods of time.  If this is happens in your home (I know mine is not the only one) then you have discovered something rather unique about brown sugar that typically doesn’t happen to your white table sugar…

IT HARDENS LIKE A ROCK!

You learned a little about how sugar molecules tend to stick to each other when we looked at the baking of cookies, but the ATOMS that make up a sugar molecule (Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen) also love to bind to water really well too!  In fact, sugar molecules break loose from other sugar molecules very well when placed into water.

It is important that you understand that sugar molecules themselves do not lose or gain any ATOMS during all of this movement.  This follows the LAW OF CONSERVATION.  In fact, a single molecule of table sugar (called sucrose) contains six ATOMS of Carbon, six ATOMS of Oxygen, and twelve ATOMS of Hydrogen.  These 24 ATOMS do not break away from each other as they dissolve in water!

THAT PESKY DIFFUSION…

Our atmosphere contains a small amount of water vapor in the air.  At some points throughout the year, this amount of water vapor (known as humidity) can really do some damage to your brown sugar.

Since sugar itself binds with water very well, over time the water within your brown sugar will DIFFUSE into the atmosphere.  This DIFFUSION leaves behind a solidified mass of brown sugar that resembles a stone brick.

DIFFUSION TO THE RESCUE

The removal of water from your brown sugar causes this dry solid to become more DENSE.  In essence, you would find more sugar molecules in a teaspoon of dry brown sugar as compared to a softer (moist) sugar.

The trick is to get water to DIFFUSE back into the brown sugar.  There are many ways to solve this problem when you need brown sugar to make (me) some oatmeal cookies.  There are so many, in fact, I can’t list all of them here so I will give you a couple of ways to solve this DIFFUSION problem.

THE FAST WAY – WITH NO DIFFUSION

Microwave a small amount of dried brown sugar (along with a small glass of water) for about a minute.  Check to see if it has softened at this time.  If not, simply “nuke it” for a few more seconds.  Just be certain you don’t end up melting your sugar!

(The water doesn’t help in the process at all.  It is simply that a microwave oven should not be operated without some level of moisture within itself.  The water may evaporate within the microwave, but this water vapor will not penetrate the brown sugar fast enough to moisten it. )

The heating of the sugar makes its molasses a little more fluid, causing the sugar to soften up.  However, you only have a couple of minutes after taking it out of the oven to measure your brown sugar before it hardens again… So work quickly!

THE NOT-SO-FAST WAY – WITH DIFFUSION

This solution comes from Robert Wolke’s excellent book, “What Einstein Told His Cook:”

“The most effective setup is probably to put the sugar in a tight-lidded container, cover it with a sheet of plastic wrap, place a damp paper towel on top of the plastic wrap, and seal it all up.  After a day or so when the sugar becomes soft enough, discard the towel and plastic wrap, and reseal the container tightly.”

So don’t throw away that hardened brown sugar just yet!  Give science a try before making another trip to the grocery store.

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

After looking through my previous posts, I’ve realized that I have spent a considerable amount of time discussing everything that triggers our sweet tooth…

…but I haven’t actually discussed HOW we get so many sweet cakes, candies, and drinks from that crystallized molecule that can be found in nearly every kitchen.

So I would like to dedicate the next few posts to the molecule we truly couldn’t live without:

SUGAR

Before we get started we need to look at how the four basic concepts of science are involved in the creation of this life-giving molecule:

HOW IS SUGAR SO IMPORTANT TO LIFE?

No, I’m not saying that your slice of cake is necessary for your existence (although it is tasty…), but it is the sugar within the cake itself that your body could not live without.

You see, sugar is the main molecule that your cells break down in order to create chemical energy for you to function.

Think of sugar like fuel in your car.  Every car needs a certain amount of fuel in order to run properly, right?  Well, it is the same with your body as well!  You body needs a certain amount of sugar every day to run, jump, dance, and move your fork through that slice of cake.  But be careful not to put too much sugar in your body!  You wouldn’t fill up the tank in your car then start pouring more fuel in your backseat or trunk, would you?  I hope not!

There are many different kinds of sugar in the world; but, regardless of the type of sugar you use in the kitchen, they ALL contain the same types of ATOMS which include Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen.

The source of all this sweetness comes from plants like sugar cane or sugar beets which are cut down, shredded, and pressed by large machines.  The pressing causes the fluid within these plants to DIFFUSE out of their cells and into a container where the liquid is boiled.

LOTS OF HEAT MEANS LOTS OF DENSITY

As this pressed liquid boils, heat DIFFUSES through its molecules.  The smaller molecules within this liquid, like water, absorb this energy pretty quickly and cause them to vibrate away from each other (forming a gas.)  As more of these energized water molecules escape the container, the sugary liquid becomes more DENSE with sugar molecules as they move closer and closer together.

As water molecules leave the heated fluid, they no longer can keep the sugar molecules apart.  So, the sugar molecules line up next to each other, bond with each other, and form a solid known as a crystal.

This transformation follows the LAW OF CONSERVATION beautifully.  The ATOMS simply rearranged themselves into a different structure.  No ATOMS were created or destroyed in the process during the formation of a crystal.

SPINNING SUGAR TO DETERMINE DENSITY

These crystals are still wet with some of the fluids that have not yet evaporated out of the liquid.  So they are placed in a device called a centrifuge (“sen-trih-few-guh”) which works a lot like your washing machine at home.  This machine spins this fluid around and around and removes the liquid portion of this solution (just like the spinning motion of your washing machine removes most of the liquid from your clothes.)

The act of spinning this solution causes its less DENSE fluid to be removed from the solution very quickly and leaves the DENSER solid crystals behind in the container.

The crystals which remain in the container are what we consider to be raw sugar and requires are few more steps before it finds its way over our strawberries!

WHAT ABOUT ALL THAT LIQUID?

The liquid that is forced out of the centrifuge is what we call molasses.  You can find this syrupy liquid in many different foods that you probably have in your home!  If you are fan of BBQ you probably have some amounts of molasses in your BBQ sauce and inside your baked beans!

Naturally, this is a simplified view into the process of refining sugar. There are a few steps I did not mention which would require much more time (and a degree in organic chemistry) to explain.  But do not worry!  We are not even CLOSE to being done discussing the topic of sugar.  Stay tuned to next week where we are going to dig even deeper into this amazing molecule!

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

One of the most frequent questions I get is, “What program do I use to make all of my pictures?”  I thought I’d devote a little time to share this information with all of you.

After using many photo editing software programs over the years, I stumbled upon a relatively unknown software (at the time) that gave me all of the “extras” I needed:

Comic Life

Plasq’s Comic Life program (for both Mac and Windows at www.plasq.com) helps families have a little fun with their photographs.  Importing photos into the program is a simple drag-and-drop procedure.  Once your photos are uploaded, it is easy to create professional-level comics complete with thought bubbles and 3D titles with the existing fonts on your computer.

If you have seen any of my work within the Classic Science Textbooks, you have noticed individual “cartoon-style pictures” that I created.  What you have not seen is an extended property of Comic Life which can create entire pages of cartoon templates automatically!

I have to be honest with you… this software comes with a price ($25 for the Standard edition/$30 for Deluxe.)  Now before you open your wallets, there is a 30-day free trial which I highly recommend!

You will also find a ton of information on the internet concerning Comic Life and how it can be used both for fun and educational purposes.  You can check out one of these resources at http://www.macinstruct.com/node/69

The ease of this program to create comics of this quality satisfied my “inner comic book geek” quickly (I always wanted to be a cartoonist when I grew up.)

I’m certain your family will find new joys in approaching your photo albums with this software!

You’ve learned how important crystals are to the creation of hard candies like butterscotch and peanut brittle and soft candies like fudge, but are there any times when you would want a candy without ANY crystals at all?

Well, the candies I just mentioned all have one specific property about them (and it’s not their simple ingredients of sugar and water.)

Can you guess what it is?

If you said that you can’t see through them (which is what scientists call opaque “oh-pay-kuh”) you are correct!  The opposite of being opaque is to be transparent.  Objects that are transparent, like windows, allow light to travel through them very easily.  And since I’m throwing around some scientific terms, let’s review some basic concepts about science that may come in handy this week:

Light cannot easily pass through most candies that are formed from crystals.  The crystals tend to get in the way of the light passing through the candy and block it from traveling through.  This makes an object opaque.

MAKING EDIBLE GLASS

The texture of transparent candy is much different than the other hard and soft candies we have explored so far.  The trick to make this type of candy is to first boil off most of the water within your sugar syrup.  Yep!  You want all of those ATOMS inside water to absorb as much heat energy as you can so that they will evaporate into the atmosphere!

By removing so much water from the syrup, you have increased the DENSITY of sugar molecules within the solution.

THIS IS GOOD!  REMEMBER – THE MORE WATER A SYRUP CONTAINS, THE SOFTER THE CANDY WILL BE

You’ve never seen a SOFT glass before right?  No way!  This type of candy is going to look AND feel like glass! So you need as much water out of that solution as possible.

After making your sugar solution incredibly hot,  the next step is to keep the sugar molecules from sticking together and forming crystals.

You may believe that the formation of crystals means that something new is being created within the solution.  However, if you have been following this blog for any period of time you would know that this does not happen!  ATOMS cannot be created (or destroyed) during the formation of crystals.  The LAW OF CONSERVATION supports this beautifully!  All that is happening is the rearranging of ATOMS within the solution into a crystal structure!  Okay, back to the candy…

Any crystals at all will cause this molten mass of sugar to turn into an opaque mess very quickly!

In order to keep these sugar molecules from binding together you have to DIFFUSE their energy away as quickly as you can!

This means you have to lower its temperature very very quickly.  If you don’t lower the temperature fast, the molecules will slow down and move into each other.  This is bad!  As they slow down, they start to stick to each other, and this is how crystals are formed.

Since crystals are made up of several sugar molecules bound together, they are large enough to block light as it passes through the candy.  This causes the candy to be opaque.  (I know I already said that once in this post, but it is very important to the next few lines…)

However, when you cool a sugar solution really fast, the sugar molecules get “stuck” in the cooling fluid and do not have the energy to move around and bind to each other.  And, since sugar molecules are so tiny, light does not bounce off of them.  This makes the candy transparent.

By the way – this is almost exactly how people make sheets of glass!  Naturally, the windows on your home are not made of sugar molecules (please don’t go around the house licking your windows.) Instead, a molecule called silicon dioxide is melted, poured, and its temperature lowered to create most of the glass that we typically find in our homes!

Movie makers have known about this property for YEARS!  In fact, it is a pretty good guess that the majority of bottles and windows that are broken over actors within the movies are made from this rapidly cooled syrup!

By the way, I’m still waiting to see the outtakes at the end of a movie where an actor starts sucking on a broken piece of “candy glass.”  I know it will happen someday…

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

Let’s review a couple of things before we dive into another way to change the texture of candy.  First of all, you learned the following rule in Part I of How To Teach Science With Candy:

THE MORE WATER A SYRUP CONTAINS, THE SOFTER THE CANDY WILL BE

This rule has to do with the TEMPERATURE  of the heated sugar water solution.  The higher the temperature of syrup, the less water it will have as it boils off and DIFFUSES into the atmosphere.

In Part II of How To Teach Science With Candy, you learned about another rule in candy making:

HOT SYRUPS FORM ROUGH, JAGGED CRYSTALS AND COOLER SYRUPS FORM SMOOTH, SMALLER CRYSTALS

This means that hot syrups contain many ATOMS that have absorbed a lot of energy and are bouncing around inside the solution.  All of this bouncing keeps sugar molecules from binding together very easily into crystals.  (How easy would it be for you to hold on to someone if an army of people kept slamming into you?) However, the few crystals that DO happen to form grow very quickly as ATOMS continue to bind to their surface.

So the big question is – How do we make smooth textured candies?

Before we tackle that question, let’s review the four main concepts of science:

IT’S TIME TO STIR THINGS UP!

You just read that “cooler syrups form smooth, smaller crystals.”  Therefore, all you need to do is make certain that the syrup you have cooked is cooled down considerably before you start…

STIRRING!

As a syrup solution cools, its ATOMS are DIFFUSING their energy into the bowl and the environment in the form of heat.  As this energy leaves the ATOMS, they slow down to the point where they are not bouncing into each other anymore.  When this happens they cannot bind to the crystals that exist within the syrup.  However, you can force sugar molecules together by STIRRING the solution!

In fact, you create a massive amount of sugar crystals as you stir the cooled syrup.  This means the DENSITY of sugar crystals increases as long as you keep stirring the solution!  This is very good if you want a smooth candy with lots of tiny crystals!

Remember… larger crystals are formed in hot syrups as many of the newly created tiny crystals are broken apart by fast moving sugar molecules.

Not only are there slower moving sugar molecules in a cool syrup, there is another cool trick to making smooth candies with lots of tiny crystals:

As more and more sugar crystals are formed within the cool syrup, there are fewer sugar molecules floating around in the syrup.  With fewer free sugar molecules moving around, the existing crystals will be unable to grow very large!

This is the secret to having bulging arm muscles when making fudge.  In order to get the smooth texture of this delicious dessert, you need to mix the cooled syrup very hard for a very long time!  Because if you stop stirring, you stop making smaller crystals!  This means the existing crystals in the syrup immediately begin to grow very large!  This will make the texture of your fudge gritty and coarse.

It may SOUND like it’s no big deal, but you’ll be sweating before you’re done!  It take a lot of stirring to make fudge!

Okay… quick review:

Hot syrup = fewer, large crystals

Cool syrup = more, smaller crystals

Making crystals = no destruction or creation of any atoms (Don’t’ forget the LAW OF CONSERVATION!)

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

Last week you learned that nearly all of the candy we know and love comes from a heated solution of sugar and water.  But even with these few ingredients, cooks have learned how to manipulate several of the variables in the cooking of this solution.

However, the temperature of the syrup not only affects the TYPE of candy you can create –

It affects the TEXTURE of the candy too!

The way in which cooks can alter the texture of candy has EVERYTHING to do with the four basic concepts of science:

These four concepts are very important as your candy cools and forms its own unique texture.  These concepts play a big role in the creation of your candy, especially if you want the smooth texture of fudge or the rough and jagged texture of rock candy.

GAZE INTO THE CRYSTAL BALL…

Fudge and rock candy have COMPLETELY different textures!  The reason for this change has to do with the number and size of the crystals in the syrup.  If you recall from our discussion on ice cream, a crystal is a mass of ATOMS or molecules bonded together in an orderly fashion, like soldiers in formation.  The cool thing about crystals in your syrup is that they will continue to bind with other similar ATOMS or molecules that are moving around in the fluid.

Think of a line of children, all holding hands, running around a playground.  The two children at the ends of the line can grab other children as they move around the playground and increase their size.  This is how a crystal grows as well!

And there is one simple rule to follow about crystals whenever you are making candy:

HOT SYRUPS FORM ROUGH, JAGGED CRYSTALS AND COOLER SYRUPS FORM SMOOTH, SMALLER CRYSTALS

But how does this work?  It’s simple…

As you probably have guessed, the ATOMS within your heated solution of sugar water absorb energy from you stove as its temperature increases.  This energy DIFFUSES into each of the ATOMS, causing them to bounce around and into each other quite a lot.

Because of all this bouncing going on, it is harder for molecules to line up, bond with each other in an orderly fashion, and form a crystal.  So, hot syrups do not make many crystals because of all the energized ATOMS bouncing into each other!

To go back to our previous story… it would be very difficult (not impossible) for a line of children to form on the playground if they were running around as fast as they could.  Think about it… as a line of kids would form, they could easily get broken apart by individual children slamming into them!  The few lines that would form could get VERY large as they have so many extra children to grab onto.  This is the same with crystals in a hot sugar solution.

Once crystals can form inside a hot sugar solution, other sugar molecules will tend to bounce into this crystal and bind with it – making a larger crystal!   Therefore hot syrup will have a lower DENSITY of sugar crystals but each crystal will be MUCH larger than crystals in cooler syrup.

THESE LARGER CRYSTALS GIVE HOT SYRUP A VERY ROUGH AND JAGGED TEXTURE WHEN IT COOLS

Okay.  Are any ATOMS created or destroyed during the formation of crystals?  Nope! It may seem like something strange is going on when you witness the growth of a crystal, but you know for certain that all of this movement follows the LAW OF CONSERVATION! There’s no way any ATOMS are being created during crystal formation, only rearranged into new (and sometimes tasty) forms.

Learn more about chemistry concepts (and many more) in the Classic Science: Series for the Family and be certain to come back every Thursday or subscribe to The Blog of Mr.Q to learn more about how to teach science during breakfast, lunch, and dinner!