🍬 Candy and dissolving liquids: the whole packet

🍬 Candy and dissolving liquids · 2nd–6th grade · 1 day of testing · about $2 · 60 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change the liquid the candy sits in, then how wide the candy is after 30 minutes will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

4 levels × 3 tries at each = 12 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🍬 Round hard candies, all the same kind: 13, all the same kind
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🚰 Warm water: warm from the tap, never hot
• 🍶 White vinegar
• 🛢️ Cooking oil
• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 12, the same size
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• 🥄 A spoon
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 1
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 👶 Small parts · 🚫 Test food is not for eating · 🧽 A bit messy

1. Label twelve clear cups with tape: three each for tap water, warm tap water, vinegar and oil.
2. Pour half a cup of the right liquid into each cup.
3. Measure across the middle of one candy in mm, and check that the others look the same size.
4. Slide one candy into each cup, and start the timer when the last one is in.
5. Do not stir, shake or bump the cups.
6. After 30 minutes, lift each candy out with a spoon and lay it on a plate.
7. Measure how wide each candy is now, across the middle. If it is gone, write 0.
8. Write each width in your table. Throw the candies away: do not eat them.
9. Find the mean width for each liquid, and draw a bar graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Liquid   I measured: how wide the candy is after 30 minutes (mm)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: liquid along the bottom, mm up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: soak candies in warm tap water for 10, 20 and 30 minutes, and draw a line of width against time.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which liquid dissolves a hard candy fastest?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing the liquid the candy sits in would change how wide the candy is after 30 minutes, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed the liquid the candy sits in (Tap water, Warm tap water, Vinegar, Cooking oil) and measured how wide the candy is after 30 minutes in mm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept candies of the same kind and size and half a cup of liquid in every cup the same, so only the liquid the candy sits in was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 4 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: Tap water and Cooking oil gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: soak candies in warm tap water for 10, 20 and 30 minutes, and draw a line of width against time.