#candy science

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King Amethar of House Rocks is a great pop to his licorice twin daughters. His Majesty explodes in rage if his family is threatened, but real-life Pop Rocks explode when their sugar melts in your mouth & a 600-psi carbon dioxide bubble bursts on your tongue!

The signature pop! from Pop Rocks isn’t caused by a chemical reaction in your mouth. What you feel is an intense version of soda bubbles bursting when you drink your favorite soft drink. Pop Rocks is made by carbonating hot liquid sugar under high pressure and then allowing that bubbly hot sugar to cool and solidify, trapping the high pressure bubbles of carbon dioxide inside hard shells of sugar. Once it is cooled, it shatters into variable size pieces when pressure is released, but tiny bubbles are still captured throughout the sweet treat--until it touches water and dissolves. Then all that pressurized & trapped carbon dioxide gets released at once, and you enjoy a loud sugary sensation!

I guess I’ll clean the kitchen & start the second part of our homeschool day. I’m wiped out. I think the gray day is making me even more sleepy than usual. BUT, that is what coffee is for. Then, we will be soaking gummy bears in different solutions to see how they react & making DNA strands with gummy bears & twizzlers. Boogie has requested spaghetti & meatballs for supper, so I’ll get him to help with that. I’m looking forward to the mandatory garlic bread. 

Tomorrow we just have to be at school for one class & then we’re going to meetup with some folks at the library. The school doesn’t offer classes on Friday, so we will have a whole day to do the couple of quick assignments for school next week. We decided that we may start our day off with donuts from the place a few blocks away. I mean, it’s really just researching our environment & testing out local places to rate the quality of their goods. Like you do. 

Pop Rocks and Carbonation

Some might say one of life’s little pleasures is eating candy. Those who have tried Pop Rocks, however, know that its sugary glory and dare-devilish allure warrant an entirely new adventure. Although it appears harmless, a handful of Pop Rocks candy will set off a fizzy explosion of sugar crystals and popping noises in your mouth.

Essentially, Pop Rocks are made of a typical hard candy sugar solution (sucrose, lactose, corn syrup and flavoring), with the addition of one important ingredient: highly-pressurized carbon dioxide (CO2). In the past few years, scientists have identified that taste receptor cells can actually detect and respond to carbonation. Read more...