Balloon Experiments with CandyPosted on 6:00 AM by Allison Sonnier

Balloon Experiments - Candy Activities for Kids

Today is the final day of our Candy Activities for Kids series.  We have had the best time

working closely with other blogs to bring you fun and educational activities using all

that Halloween candy you're bound to accumulate this time of year.  On Monday we shared

a homemade finger paint recipe using Starburst, Tuesday we made chocolate playdough using

Hershey Kisses, Wednesday we played math games with M&M's, Thursday we made erupting

art, and the theme for today is science with candy.  A few months ago I came across this Pop

Rocks expander experiment from Steve Spangler, and I've had it on my to do list ever since.

What better time to experiment with Pop Rocks than during a candy series?  Our balloon

experiments ended up being even cooler than I expected.

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Supplies:

soda Pop Rocks Nerds balloons

How to Expand a Balloon Using Soda and Candy

Directions:  Attach a balloon to the mouth of a funnel and pour the candy into the balloon.

Next attach the balloon to a soda bottle.  We used 12 ounce bottles for our experiment.  Be

careful to not let any of the candy spill into the soda while you are attaching it.  

Once the balloon is securely on the soda bottle shake the contents of the balloon into the

soda.

JZ (6) thought the expanding balloon was the coolest thing ever!

We did the balloon experiment six times.  The amount of soda remained constant.

We used one package of Pop Rocks for the first balloon and two for the second, and the

expanded balloons were nearly identical.

On our third bottle of soda we used Nerds.

The Nerds produced a much larger reaction in the soda.

In our fifth balloon we added a ton of Nerds, as many as the balloon could hold.  For a split

second I thought the balloon was going to pop from the pressure, but it calmed down quickly.

Since the large quantity of Nerds reacted strongly with the soda we added six pouches of Pop

Rocks to the final balloon.  The reaction was much stronger than the first two tries, but it still

wasn't as strong as with the Nerds.

This was definitely one of the coolest experiments we've ever done and definitely the most

exciting thing we have done with balloons.  

For more fun experiments follow my Science for Kids board on Pinterest.

Be sure and check out the other science with candy posts from the series:

Candy Corn Catapults! (Four ways to build a catapult out of items from around the house!)

This week, several excellent bloggers have teamed up to provide a play series of ideas for what to do with ALL of the candy that will be entering our homes this month!  Here is our contribution to the series – candy corn catapults!We’re going to show you four different catapult versions that can all be built with items from around this house.  However, it would also be fun to just provide the materials and let your kids experiment with building the best catapult.  Building and testing catapults to see which shoot candy corn the farthest would make a fun fall playdate!

Some friends of ours helped us come up with good catapult designs, and all of the boys (8 boys total!) had fun launching candy corn!

“Wow!  Look at all those boys!  Are ALL those boys yours?”

“No, this time they’re not, actually!  In this photo four are mine, and two are friends.”  :-)

 

Whoa!  That one went far!

 Here are the catapults we built!Catapult #1:  Pencil CatapultAidan designed this catapult completely on his own.  He built it out of unsharpened pencils, rubber bands, and a plastic spoon.

 This catapult shoots well.  It’s a little unpredictable, but fun overall.  It would also be easy for kids to build on their own.

Catapult #2:  Wide Craft Stick CatapultWe saw the idea for this catapult on Kids Activities Blog.  This catapult is easy to build out of wide craft sticks and rubber bands.  However, it shoots up towards the ceiling, and not very far forward.  The older boys were not happy with the distance. I will say, however, that this is the best design for young kids.  Owen (age 4) could shoot this catapult easily, and he didn’t care where it shot – he just had fun launching candy corn!  We built our version with a plastic spoon, and our friends

built theirs with a bottle cap. The bottle cap is definitely easier for little hands to shoot.

Catapult #3:  Popsicle Stick CatapultAidan and I built this catapult out of popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and a plastic spoon.  It is more difficult to put together, but it shoots at a good angle, and it shoots far!

This is how it shoots.  The popsicle stick that goes across at the top stops the spoon and ensures that the candy corn is launched at the right angle.

We used the instructions in this YouTube video to build this catapult.  The video explains it much better than I could!Catapult #4:  Siege CatapultAidan’s friend built this awesome catapult out of clothes pins, craft sticks, binder clips, rubber bands, duct tape, and a plastic spoon.

The design for this catapult was modified from the siege catapult in Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction: Build Implements of Spitball Warfare.  Please note that this book has a lot of fun projects, but it’s not actually geared toward kids.  The title is very tongue-in-cheek and refers to cubicle workers building mini weapons out of office supplies.The siege catapult was a lot of fun, and Aidan is dying to build one just like it!  But first, we have to go to the store for binder clips.

Be sure to visit these fantastic blog for more fun science activities involving CANDY!

Sink or Float Candy ScienceAfter painting with candy and doing some candy math, we also had to try some candy science. This is a simple sink or float experiment, but the kids loved it because of the candy. It's simple to put together and the only materials required are pen and paper, a selection of candy bars, and a bowl of water. It's a great way to teach children about forming hypotheses and testing their ideas and also a nice way to use up all that Halloween loot.

To begin, I made a very simple chart. Since my kids aren't reading yet, I drew containers of water (you could totally tell that's what they were, right? Right??) in the predictions and results columns that they could mark.

I put a different kind of fun size candy bar in each space in the first column. I didn't tape them down because I wanted the kids to be able to pick each up while they were making their predictions.

If the kids thought the candy bar was going to float, they marked the water at the top of the glass. If they thought the candy bar would sink, they marked the bottom of the glass. My five year old guessed that the bigger candy bars would sink and the smaller ones would float (makes sense to me).

My three year old hedged her bets by coloring in the entire glass.

She'd color the whole world pink if she could.

After they were done with their predictions, we dropped each candy bar into the water and recorded the results on the last column of the chart. 

The results:Twix - sank3 Musketeers - floatedKit Kat - floatedSnickers - sankMilky Way - sank

Afterward, they did some of their own experiments by cutting the candy bars, putting them all in at the same time, stirring like crazy, and just generally making a mess. 

The Science: Anything more dense than water (like sugar) will sink, while things that are less dense than water will float. The Kit Kat and 3 Musketeers have a lot of air in them.

Balancing with M&M’s Posted by Trisha on October 11, 2013 

Our candy activities for kids series continues. Today’s theme is candy science! We are doing some

balancing with M&M’s.

Balancing with M&M’s

I created a simple balance from a hanger, yarn, tape, and cups {similar to the hanger balance Deirdre made

atKids Activities Blog}. I used two little plastic cups from a package that I’ve had in my house forever. Raid

your recycling bin and look for two containers that are the same – yogurt cups, etc. My cups did not like to

have holes poked in the them – they simply split apart. Instead, I taped the yarn around the top of the cup

and formed a loop.

I hung the hanger on a door knob and placed the yarn and cups on the hanger.

I showed Aiden how adding M&M’s changed the balance of the system. The cup with M&M’s was lower than

the empty cup.

 

He added M&M’s to the empty cup to balance the system once again. I had him count the number of M&M’s

in each cup. There was the same amount. We talked about the words equal and balanced.

Aiden then found some other things to weigh with the M&M’s. He chose Legos.

He observed 5 Lego blocks was heavier than 20 M&M’s.

2 Lego blocks weighed about the same as 20 M&M’s.

Balancing with M&M’s is a fun activity that works on measuring, comparing, making observations, counting,

and more.