Chemistry at Home: Chocolate and Gum

Show Notes

Bonus Episode: Chemistry at Home 12

Here's another bonus episode dedicated to teaching a specific chemistry experiment you can do at home. This month, we see what happens when we combine chocolate and gum. Yep, you read that right. And yes, it's a little gross.

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What is Chemistry For Your Life?

A podcast that helps you understand the fascinating chemistry hidden in your everyday life.

Have you ever wondered why onions make you cry? Or how soap gets your hands clean? What really is margarine, or why do trees change colors in the fall? Melissa is a chemist, and to answer these questions she started a podcast, called Chemistry for your life!

In each episode Melissa explains the chemistry behind one of life’s mysteries to Jam, who is definitely not a chemist, but she explains it in a way that is easy to understand, and totally fascinating.

If you’re someone who loves learning new things, or who wonders about the way the world works, then give us a listen.

Melissa: 00:09

Hey. I'm Melissa.

Jam: 00:10

I'm Jam.

Melissa: 00:11

And I'm a chemist.

Jam: 00:12

And I'm not.

Melissa: 00:13

And welcome to chemistry for your life.

Jam: 00:15

The podcast helps you understand and do chemistry In your everyday life, for fun at home, once a month, sometimes.

Melissa: 00:23

And this this one, this fun at home once a month is directly related to our Fun chocolate series that we've been doing.

Jam: 00:30

Yes.

Melissa: 00:32

So, Jam, tell me what you did for your experiment today. Okay.

Jam: 00:37

Oh my gosh. So I chewed a piece of gum.

Melissa: 00:41

Mhmm.

Jam: 00:41

And I talk about it in the video a little bit, and so you'll see that, but I do not like gum. Alright?

Melissa: 00:46

I did not know that before I subjected Jam to this.

Jam: 00:49

Yeah. So it's already a a rough start. I thought it was just like So for other types of food, say you eat a piece of steak that has some gristle to it and the bite lasts a long time. I avoid that on everything else. Why would I want to choose something that I just end up having to chew forever?

Melissa: 01:09

Yeah. It makes sense.

Jam: 01:10

It's just like, So anyway but do you like mints? I like breath not being bad, so not against that. Mints, whatever else you use. Mouthwash. Who knows?

Jam: 01:20

So don't yeah. I'm for that. So I put the piece of gum back to the experiment. Put the piece of gum in my mouth, chewed around a little bit, got it going. And then I broke 2 of these kinda large ish squares, like larger than, like, a Hershey's square per se.

Jam: 01:38

It's really the size of, I guess, almost like 2 of the Hershey rectangles, sort of.

Melissa: 01:42

Yeah. Yeah.

Jam: 01:43

And I broke it into pieces so I could kinda In introduce it in my mouth, a little bit at a time. And so I put in, like, half a square or almost the size of a Hershey square

Melissa: 01:55

Mhmm.

Jam: 01:56

In my mouth. Started chewing it around with the gum, which was such a strange Experience. It's

Melissa: 02:03

already wrong. You're not supposed to do that.

Jam: 02:05

Yep. Yep. Every rule in the book, every religion has very clear rules against this. Every single one. And father forgive me.

Jam: 02:13

So, I chewed that around, and the chocolate, you know, eventually dissolved away, and the gum remained. But during the time that I was chewing them, it was very strange. It just felt so weird. Now just with half a square. So I put in the other half of the square, chewed that around, and I noticed pretty quickly the gum was starting to change its consistency.

Jam: 02:37

Mhmm. Started getting less firm, less gummy to to a degree, and more, Loose, more malleable, whatever word makes sense here. So then I So at this point, I had chewed 1 entire square. So I added another half square and chewed that around. And when I finished that half square, the gum was gone.

Jam: 03:11

So I did 3, basically you know, 3 halves. And by the third half, It was just completely gone. And when I

Melissa: 03:20

This is gone.

Jam: 03:21

When the chocolate was gone out of my mouth, somehow the gum was gone too.

Melissa: 03:26

And it

Jam: 03:27

was very freaky, to be honest with you.

Melissa: 03:30

That's so fun. Okay. So What happened here? We will probably talk about the chemistry of gum in the future because it's pretty fun.

Jam: 03:38

Mhmm.

Melissa: 03:39

But gum is made up of a lot of Long nonpolar carbon chains. Carbon and hydrogen, that's the basics of gum. There's a lot of other stuff in it, but it's It doesn't dissolve in water. So if you've ever chewed gum and drank water, you know that it it maybe gets a little weird, but it stays around. It doesn't disappear.

Jam: 04:00

Right. Right.

Melissa: 04:02

That's similar to when you mix water and oil. They don't dissolve into each other.

Jam: 04:07

Right. Right.

Melissa: 04:09

And this is a concept we talked about in chemistry before that likes dissolve likes. Like dissolves likes. So something that has a Similar molecular structure more easily interacts with something else that has a similar molecular structure. Just the way the electrons are and things happen, They'll interact more easily, and so water has a very different structure. It has a partial positive, partial negative.

Melissa: 04:31

The electrons are bunched up. That's not the same thing in gum. The electrons are all evenly spread out, so they don't wanna interact with water. But Chocolate has a bunch of fat in it, and that fat is a bunch of hydrogens and carbons that are very similar to the molecular structure of gum.

Jam: 04:53

Got it.

Melissa: 04:54

So those 2 things can interact, and the gum basically dissolves in the chocolate.

Jam: 05:01

Wow. Weird.

Melissa: 05:05

Very weird. So this is a pretty easy experiment to do at home. I recommend you use milk chocolate because it has a higher fat content.

Jam: 05:15

Okay. I was gonna ask about that.

Melissa: 05:18

Yeah. I think you should use milk chocolate specifically. And if your kids you think they're not gonna be able to deal with the weirdness of the gum because it is really weird. You could have them chew up the gum and then drop it in water and drop it in, like, warm water And warm chocolate and mix it up and see if the gum dissolves in each one. And it

Jam: 05:40

should

Melissa: 05:40

at least dissolve a little bit in, like, melted warm milk chocolate or something.

Jam: 05:44

Mhmm.

Melissa: 05:45

But some questions to ask your kiddo. When they chew the gum, you can ask them what they think it is. Is it a solid, a liquid, or a gas? It's kind of weird. I think it's somewhere between a solid and a liquid because it moves around.

Melissa: 05:58

It is I think, eventually, you would probably land on solid, but just get them to think about that because it's kind of different. Mhmm. And then ask them the same thing about the chocolate and ask them what they think will happen. And I would probably start a a kid off on chewing gum and drinking water and seeing if anything changes. Obviously, this needs to be a child old enough that they won't swallow the gum Right.

Melissa: 06:20

That it's okay for them to eat sugar, that it's okay for them to chew gum. You know? So definitely only do this if it's in a safe age range. But Mhmm. I would start by having them Chew the gum and drink some water and see if anything happens.

Jam: 06:32

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Melissa: 06:34

And get them to predict what's gonna happen before they drink the water and then reflect on what happened after they drink the water. So, like, what happened? Why do you think the water didn't wash away the gum? You know?

Jam: 06:45

Yeah. And

Melissa: 06:46

then Give them you could even try maybe, like, a chip, which is gross. But a chip and gum, it's not gonna wash away the gum. Usually, a chip wouldn't.

Jam: 06:56

Right.

Melissa: 06:56

And then finish with the chocolate and the gum. And for each one, get them to guess what's gonna happen and then reflect on what happened afterwards. And I think they will probably find this fun if they're not incredibly grossed out by it, which either one of those is possible. Yeah.

Jam: 07:13

I feel like As a kid, I definitely have been a little less grossed out by it. I think the idea of, like, eating 2 things that are weird Appeals to certain kinds of kids. You know what I mean? Yeah. If not a lot of them or, like I mean, all of us also would mix sodas together, you know, and be like, oh, what's it gonna be like to have?

Jam: 07:31

Yeah. Like Definitely. Mix 5 different sodas at this at the restaurant together or something like that. Yeah. So I feel like

Melissa: 07:37

A 100%.

Jam: 07:38

There's that little part of many of us That, that, at least his kids was there, so maybe they would like it. But I was a little bit they took that was challenging to do Yeah. For me.

Melissa: 07:50

Yeah. I couldn't finish. I had a 1 square and then saw that it was working

Jam: 07:57

Mhmm.

Melissa: 07:58

And then stopped and knew that Jam would be able to do it because I couldn't take it. I couldn't take the flavors. It was too much for me. So which is weird because I like mint in chocolate, like junior mints, but it was just not the same thing.

Jam: 08:14

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. Definitely not the same.

Melissa: 08:16

You know? And for this one, I think it's pretty straightforward, and I think kids will think it's really fun if they can get over the factor. Some kids don't like gross things. Some kids don't like, you know, getting messy or whatever. But

Jam: 08:27

Right. Right.

Melissa: 08:29

If you can just get them to make predictions about what happens, think they're thinking. They're getting in the scientific mindset, making a prediction, and then reflecting afterwards and critically Thinking about what happened even in kid language.

Jam: 08:43

Mhmm.

Melissa: 08:44

That is getting them into a good scientific mindset. You're helping them think about the world around them and draw conclusions about it. So they don't have to get everything right. They don't have to guess the science behind it. They just need to make observations and talk about it think about it, and that is a great thing for kids to do to be practicing little scientists.

Jam: 09:04

Nice. Nice.

Melissa: 09:05

That's pretty much for this experiment. I did wanna thank the American Chemical Society. They put out our reactions video on this, and that's what we drew this from. So we'll link to that in our show notes, and thank you guys so much for listening.

Jam: 09:17

Thanks, guys. Good luck on this one. This episode of chemistry for your life was created by Melissa Colini and Jam Robinson. And we'd like to give a special thanks to e Robinson who reviewed this episode.