floating candy experiment

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Different kinds of candy, such as chocolates, sugar candy, 3 Musketeers bar, Kit Kat bar
Drop the candy in the water.
Watch what happens: does it sink or float?
If you have a 3 Musketeers bar, poke it to break the chocolate shell. Do you see bubbles escaping?

7 comments:

What a cool way to teach density and buoyancy with every day stuff:)

I will use this for the end of the year exam reviews. I'm always looking for new Density demos.

I did this for my 6th graders as part of a science circus (various stations going at once) to study matter and its physical properties. I had 4 cylinders - 2 with oil, 2 with water. We used 3 Musketeers and Twix. We did the experiment for each candy type (one in oil, one in water). It was fun to see their amazement at the activity. It got them thinking about what other liquids and candies they could try for more results to observe.

That sounds so fun! Let me know if they make any candy discoveries.

How do you make starburst float?

How could I make any of these candies sink or could i?

You can smash them or squash them to let the air bubbles out. That will make the candy denser and ready to sink. Or you can pour a cup of cooking oil and sink the candy in that, as in the comment above.

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Saturday Science: Floating Candy

Candy bars
Choose a few of your favorite candy bars. (We used Three Musketeers, Snickers, Kit Kat and Hershey's Chocolate.)
Fill up a bowl or a small demo tank with water.
Remove the wrappers from the candy bars.
Do a little research by biting into the candy and seeing what's inside.
Make a guess based on the contents as to whether the candy will float or sink.
Drop them in. Do they act the same, or different? The Hershey's and Snickers bars should sink like rocks to the bottom, while the Kit Kat and Three Musketeers float at the top!