Colorful Candy Art...
This year, instead of just “tasting the rainbow” with all of that sugar and artificial stuff, let’s learn from it!
Materials Needed
- Package of the “Taste the Rainbow,” fruit-flavored, sugar-coated candy
- Shallow round white dish
- Warm water (not boiling)
Steps:
1. Arrange the candies alternating colors so they are touching or close to touching.
2. Slowly and gently pour the warm water into the middle until the bottom half of the candies are covered. (Covering the candies may cause them to float, and that will destroy the pattern and the project.)
Observation
After a few minutes, you should have seen the colors spreading and even heading to the middle of the dish.
The Science
The first thing you probably observed was the colors in the sugar coating. They dissolve into the water next to the candies. That’s called dissolution. It occurred after the warm water began to dissolve the water-soluble sugar coating. This causes the water around the candies to become more concentrated.
This caused a second reaction, known as diffusion. The diffusion involves the movement of the highly concentrated water near the candies. It moves to the area in the dish with a lower concentration of sugar, the center. This is a natural reaction to balance the density throughout the water.
The dense sugar-water traveled to the middle of the dish. You should have also seen that the colors didn’t mix. That’s because the colored water was more concentrated than the plain water.
