Wednesday, April 23, 2014

What to do with All Those Leftover Peeps: A Dissolving Experiment

Easter has passed and if you're joining in a candy coma, we don't blame you. But if you don't think you could stuff another Peep in your mouth if your life depended on it, we don't blame you there either. Do you wish you could just make those sugar-filled, fluffy marshmallows disappear? Well consider your wish granted: cue the dissolving peep experiment.

Here's what you'll need:
  • Water
  • Vinegar
  • Apple Juice 
  • Soda 
  • Laundry Detergent 
  • Five Clear Glasses
  • Five Peeps of your Choice

Once you've gathered the goods, it's time to get started.
  1. Start by arranging your glasses on a tray. Add one Peep and one of your five liquids/solvents to each glass and label them. 
  2. Now for the hard part: waiting. As you wait to see what will happen to your Peeps, write down predictions - what you think will happen and why.
  3. After three hours, check on your marshmallow friends and record what kind of changes you see. At this point, the only thing you should be noticing is color change.
  4. After 16 hours, take a peek at your Peeps again and see what's changed. More color change should be occurring, though you might not notice any dissolving yet.
  5. On day two, you'll start to see signs of the Peep in the vinegar dissolving, and b day three, you'll notice the Peep in the apple juice starting to dissolve.
  6. End your experiment on day four (or keep on keepin'-on if you wish!). Carefully take each Peep out of their respective cup and observe what's left of them.
  7. Record what you observe (amount of Peep dissolved, color change, shape change, texture change, etc.) and have your kiddos write down why they think the Peeps reacted differently in each solvent.
If there's too many Peeps in your house for you to count at this point, do the experiment again and try out different solvents!