Float and Sink Halloween Style II

Testing the floating and sinking of candy is a fun way to play with candy.  Your dentist would totally approve.

At the top of the picture you can see all the wrappers from the candy in the tray. We used starburst (strawberry), snickers, butterfingers, a mini jawbreaker and 3musketeers. The 3Musketeers is the only candy that floated (lower left corner).

We ended up trying all kinds of candy and crowding the pan. Eventually the water turned brown with the dissolving chocolate and candy coatings. In the end only 3Musketeers floated.

Science Moment: If you break apart a 3Musketeers bar you will see that it is whipped and frothy inside. The air bubbles help to create buoyancy. The candy is positively buoyant - it is less dense than the amount of water it displaced. Here is a nice blog written for older kids with some experiments on buoyancy.

Next we thought we'd test an urban legend  We had heard legend that the "s" on skittles floated so we tried both skittles and M&Ms to see if the letters floated off.  The yellow and blue are M&Ms and the red and green are skittles. The candy coating melts off quickly.

And the "s" really does come off of skittles and float. 

And so does the "m" on an M&M!

Tomorrow I will tell you all about the other ways we played with candy!