painting with candy: candy experiments (part two)

Maddy, Owen, and Cora had an absolute blast performing candy experiments using their Halloween loot this week, but I think the most fun they had stemmed from our own experiment missteps.

We tried to conquer the Color Separation experiment, but our little sheets from the USA Science and Engineering Festival didn’t outline the experiment steps like we (I) needed them to.

(Please note: I should have done a little more research to prepare, but I, too, was in a candy fog, I admit. I’m sure if any other person read the directions on the handy dandy little Candy Experiment Sheets, she’d have no problem whatsoever!)

Here’s how my scientists turned all Monet on me:

Painting With Candy:

The goal of Color Separation Experiment is to let brightly colored candy dissolve in water, then use coffee filters so that the different dyes separate and climb up the filter paper.

Sounds incredibly interesting and magical, right?

Maddy dips her Skittle ‘brush’ into the water, ready to paint!

My little experiment sheet from the ‘Fest didn’t outline the steps like I needed them to be outlined, but what my little scientists learned was that the dye on their candy worked just as well as the watercolors in their palates. And this was fine with me.

We reviewed the sheet a few times, tried to follow the directions, but Maddy, Owen, and Cora got majorly distracted by their inner artists.  So they spend a solid 30 minutes painting.

They rolled, they dropped, they blended, and they drew.   With Skittles.

We talked about how the colors moved up and around the coffee filter and how they could stamp colors onto the filters if they placed the filter on the color-saturated plate.

Candy painting was not the cleanest of activities. . .

. . . but it was so much fun!

We watched the colors fade over time, when more water was added or when the whole paper was submerged. We wondered what would happen if we tasted the ‘paint’ (nothing) or if we tasted the colorless candies (no one wanted to).  Unlike the times when we’ve played with Jell-O mix on wet fingers (accidentally, of course), these colors weren’t that sweet, so we did chat about where the sugar seemed to be in the candies (not in the dye–or not much in the dye).

We are totally hooked on candy experimenting!

Although that’s all we’ve done up to this point,  we do have a ton of other ways we plan to play with our candy in the next few days.   Until then, however, we’ve got a soccer season to close out, some Thanksgiving projects to begin,  homework to be completed, and family coming in for the weekend!

Again, many thanks to Loralee for her work on candyexperiments.com and for her inspiration on our own Candy Experiments (part one) as well as today’s post.

Happy experimenting!

Want a few more fun, foodie-science ideas?

Check out:

• candy experiments, play with color
• candy experiments part 1
• paint with candy
• candy cane experiments, 2.0
• learn with food
• get kids to try new foods
• fractions with food
• chocolate math
• monster sandwiches