fanta gummy bear mentos experiment

Classic Science | Mentos and Soda Experiment

Welcome back for another STEM Saturday ! I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally be sharing some of our favorite science experiments. Each of the experiments are classics but are experiments we think every kid should try at least once! Have you ever heard of the mentos and soda experiment ? I am sure you have! Well, we did this one but we did it with a twist! In fact, we did it 3 different ways and can’t wait to tell you about it!

* This post may contain affiliate links for your convenience. Click here for my full disclosure.

3 Variations of Mentos and Soda Experiment

Setting up the experiment.

Did you know the classic “mentos & soda” experiment is actually a demonstration. What this means, is that it usually does not involve problem solving or predictions. Instead, it simply demonstrates the reasoning behind the explosion of soda. Turning this classic demonstration into a science experiment is as easy as one, two, three.

Basically you want to involve the children. What do they think? How do they think you should do the demonstration. What variables do they think they could manipulate to change the outcome of the experiment?

You will need: Soda (depending on how many variables you want to adjust, you might want several kinds) Mentos

Optional: Yardstick or measuring tape Mentos dispenser (we wish we had this)

Conducting the Experiment

We made three variations to this simple and classic experiment. The boys wanted to test size of the bottle, type of soda, and number of Mentos. They also wanted to explore type of Mentos but they ran out of steam before we could get to it.

The important thing to remember is that you only want to test one variable at a time. You will also want to have the children determine HOW they will judge the various experiments.

How many Mentos Do You Need?

The first experiment the boys wanted to was to test the amount of Mentos we needed. We chose to use a smaller bottle for this experiment, while we figured out the best Mentos to Soda Ratio. Trying to fit 2 packs of Mentos into a bottle was near impossible.

What Size Soda Works Best with Mentos?

This one was really fun! As you can see the large bottle had the best results! We had a little mishap with getting the Mentos in at one time, which is why I think we would love the Mentos dispenser . The boys noticed that the smallest bottle didn’t have room for the Mentos and soda to react, resulting in a smaller reaction. Now we were ready for the big experiment!

What Kind of Soda is Best?

This was the mother of all mothers! I mean look at their faces! We tested several sodas including Soda Water!

We had so much fun doing this experiment and the kids ask to do it over and over again! What variable would you try changing?

Do you have a favorite Classic Science Experiment ? I would love to know! Connect with me on Facebook , Twitter , Google+ , Pinterest , Instagram or subscribe by email . I can’t wait to hear your ideas.

TIME FOR STEM SATURDAY BLOG HOP!

Every Saturday we will get so many wonderful ideas linked up from around the web that we have decided we want to feature some of these great ideas. That’s why every Saturday, I will pick from the posts linked up and feature my absolute favorites. This might be a hard choice to make, luckily you can always head over to last week’s post and check out more great science resources!

This Week’s Feature:

Fizzing Science by The Practical Mom Blog

VISIT THESE GREAT BLOGGERS FOR MORE STEM FUN!

Candy Science from Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tail

The Ultimate Guide to Paper Airplane Fun & Learning from The Science Kiddo

Bumblebee Math Grid Game from Stir the Wonder

FREE DOWNLOAD

Discover how to get siblings to get along even when all they do is annoy each other with the Sibling “Get Along” Poster Pack!

5 thoughts on “Classic Science | Mentos and Soda Experiment”

Love this experiment! Pinning it for this summer!

Pingback: DIY Rocket Building Station for Kids - Lemon Lime Adventures

Thanks for featuring our Eno Explosion! Reminds me we need to do more science experiments at home! Shall try the mentos soda one soon 🙂

Pingback: Summer Science Experiments and Activities for Kids! - Frugal Fun For Boys

Pingback: Experimentos e atividades científicas de verão para crianças! – Tarefas

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

CONNECT WITH ME

It’s a wonderful world — and universe — out there.

Come explore with us!  

Science News Explores

The mentos geyser: from demo to real science.

I moved a popular party trick to the laboratory to make it more informative

Soda geysers are an explosive good time, but you need to vary your sweets if you’re going to turn a demonstration into an experiment.

B. Bello/SSP

Share this:

• Google Classroom

By Bethany Brookshire

September 15, 2015 at 6:00 am

This article is one of a series of Experiments meant to teach students about how science is done, from generating a hypothesis to designing an experiment to analyzing the results with statistics. You can repeat the steps here and compare your results — or use this as inspiration to design your own experiment. 

If you’re ever up for a fun and messy time, take one two-liter bottle of diet soda outside. Open the cap and place it on the ground. Use a small paper tube to quickly slide in 6 Mentos mint candies. Then, make way!

The resulting geyser is one of the most popular science demonstrations. But it’s not an experiment. Despite its explosive power, it doesn’t answer questions about how the geyser works or what aspects of its ingredients matter most. Luckily, it’s easy to turn this demonstration into your own experiment. I’ll show you how.

What gives the soda geyser its energetic gush? When people talk about this demonstration on the Internet, they always use Mentos. They are very specific about the candy — it has to be Mentos.

I looked up other science sites to find out why Mentos are important. By reading some of the scientific papers  on this, I learned that Mentos are covered in tiny little pits . This allows bubbles to form, triggering our fountain of fizz.

Behind those bubbles, I learned, is a process called nucleation . In chemistry, this process causes structures to form by themselves. In the case of the soda spray, it’s the bubbles of carbon dioxide that assemble by themselves. Using high pressure, beverage makers pump this colorless, odorless gas into a drink to provide a pleasant tingle. That gas remains dissolved in the liquid until the soda container is opened. This releases the pressure. At once, carbon-dioxide molecules begin to collect as tiny bubbles.

Usually this bubble formation — nucleation — isn’t very explosive. But that changes when you add a little bit of candy. Mentos have a surface full of tiny craters. The little bumps and dips serve as nucleation sites — spots where tiny carbon-dioxide bubbles can cling. With all those craters, bubbles form so fast they need to explode outward. And in a bottled up soft drink, they have nowhere to go but up.

Knowing how the geyser works gives me a way to form a hypothesis — an idea I can test. If nucleation sites are important to form a geyser, then I might hypothesize that candies with rough surfaces will produce bigger fountains than candies with smooth surfaces.

I decided to test three kinds of sweets. As my control, I’ll again use those Mentos, with their pitted surfaces. Next, I’ll try M&Ms, which have a very smooth candy shell. Finally sugar cubes have pits and craters much larger than the Mentos.

These three sweets also start out as different sizes. So instead of putting in the same numbers of candies, I will put in the same mass — 22 grams (about 0.8 ounces) of each type.

I measured fountain size in two ways. First, I set off all my geysers in front of a wall. I put marks up the wall every 10 centimeters (or 3.9 inches). I then videotaped all of my geysers to identify their maximum height.

But there’s another way to measure geysering: weigh the soda! A soft drink that erupts with a high spout will lose more of its liquid than one that emits a small squirt. By weighing the soda bottles before and after each test, I can determine how much liquid was lost in each test.

I also took care to test each type of candy many times. Each fountain spray will be slightly different, even if each test uses the same kind and amount of candy. For each type of candy — my test variable — I added up all of the geyser sizes and calculated the average. Then I ran statistics , comparing the average geyser size for each type of candy.

I made six fizzing fountains for each type of candy. Then I graphed my results, so that everyone can see my data.

You can see on the right that M&Ms, with the smoothest shell, triggered the smallest eruption, measured by loss of beverage mass. Sugar cubes made a bigger one. Mentos made the biggest of all. The stars and plus signs on my graph are used to indicate a  p  value —the probability of seeing a difference as big as the one I found if the difference between geysers was due to chance. These stars and plus signs indicate a very small  p  value of less than 0.001 — or less than one percent — suggesting the result was significant, and not due to chance. 

I also weighed my sodas before and after. In the second graph at right you can see that the sodas with M&Ms lost less weight than sodas with sugar cubes. Mentos geysers spouted out the most soda.

Finally I performed a  correlation  — or comparison identifying a possible link — between geyser height and the amount of soda lost during a geyser. 

The graph below shows there is a relationship between the height of the geyser and the amount of weight lost from each soda bottle during the test. A taller geyser is associated with a larger loss in soda mass — a positive correlation .

Have you ever done a soda geyser? Turn a simple fountain into an experiment, and see if you can repeat my results. 

Note : The idea for this experiment came from the great book Candy Experiments 2 , by Loralee Leavitt. This book has loads of chemistry demonstrations, all featuring candy!

Follow Eureka! Lab   on Twitter

Power Words

(for more about power words, click  here ).

carbonation     The process of pumping carbon dioxide into a liquid, to imbue that liquid with bubbles. It gives the now-carbonated liquid a fizzy taste.

carbon dioxide  A colorless, odorless gas produced by all animals when the oxygen they inhale reacts with the carbon-rich foods that they’ve eaten. Carbon dioxide also is released when organic matter (including fossil fuels like oil or gas) is burned. Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. Plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen during photosynthesis, the process they use to make their own food.

correlation    A mutual relationship or connection between two variables. When there is a positive correlation, an increase in one variable is associated with an increase in the other. (For instance, scientists might correlate an increase in time spent watching TV with an increase in risk of obesity.) Where there is an inverse correlation, an increase in one value is associated with a decrease in the other. (Scientists might correlate an increase in TV watching with a decrease in time spent exercising each week.) A correlation between two variables does not necessarily mean one is causing the other. 

geyser     A vent (opening) in Earth’s surface that intermittently sends up a tall spray of steam or hot water. The sometimes explosive discharge of water and steam is propelled by the geothermal heating of water below ground.

hypothesis  A proposed explanation for a phenomenon. In science, a hypothesis is an idea that must be rigorously tested before it is accepted or rejected.

mass   A number that shows how much an object resists speeding up and slowing down — basically a measure of how much matter that object is made from. For objects on Earth, we know the mass as “weight.”

molecule   An electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O 2 ), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H 2 O).

nucleation    (in chemistry) The process of new structures forming by self-assembly, or the start of a new phase in a chemical process that happens spontaneously.

p value      (in research and statistics) This is the probability of seeing a difference as big or bigger than the one observed if there is no effect of the variable being tested. Scientists generally conclude that a p value of less than five percent (written 0.05) is statistically significant, or unlikely to occur due to some factor other than the one tested.

statistical analysis    A mathematical process that allows scientists to draw conclusions from a set of data. In research, a result is significant (from a statistical point of view) if the observed difference between two or more conditions is unlikely to be due to chance. Obtaining a result that is statistically significant means that it is unlikely to observe that much of a difference if there really is no effect of the conditions being measured.

statistical significance   In research, a result is significant (from a statistical point of view) if the likelihood that an observed difference between two or more conditions would be due to chance. Obtaining a result that is statistically significant means there is a very high likelihood that any difference that is measured was not the result of random accidents.

statistics  The practice or science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large quantities and interpreting their meaning. Much of this work involves reducing errors that might be attributable to random variation. A professional who works in this field is called a statistician.

• Grades 6-12
• School Leaders

Get our mega Halloween worksheets bundle! 👻

Every product is independently selected by (obsessive) editors. Things you buy through our links may earn us a commission.

Mentos and Coke Experiment: How-To Plus Free Worksheet

This explosive experiment teaches kids about physical reactions.

Adding Mentos candy to Coke is the stuff of legend. Every kid has heard the rumors about the explosive combination that results, but how many have actually tried it? While science teachers have been performing this experiment for years, it was first popularized in September of 2005 thanks to a viral video from Steve Spangler Science . The several-foot-high geyser that shoots from the soda bottle is a fun and awe-inspiring hands-on activity that any scientist in the making can perform. Be forewarned though: You’ll probably want to perform this experiment outside.

Read on to learn more about the Mentos and Coke experiment, and fill out the form on this page to grab your free recording sheet for the experiment.

How does the Mentos and Coke experiment work?

In this experiment, you drop Mentos mints into a 2-liter bottle of Coke. Make sure your bottle of soda is on a flat surface in a location where it is OK to make a mess. You then load the Mentos into your paper roll or geyser tube . Once the Mentos are dropped into the soda, they sink to the bottom, which causes the gas to expand and pushes the soda out of the bottle. This creates an exploding geyser effect.

What does the Mentos and Coke experiment teach?

Although you can’t see it, dissolved carbon dioxide is the invisible substance that makes soda bubbly and fizzy. As long as the soda remains in the bottle, the gas is kept in place through the pressurized conditions. When you shake a bottle of soda, some of that gas is released and the bubbles stick to nucleation sites or tiny defects on the inside of the container. If you open the shaken bottle, the bubbles will rapidly rise and push the liquid up and out of the bottle.

Aside from shaking the soda, another way to help the carbon dioxide escape is to drop an object into the bottle. Mentos are the perfect objects, since each candy has many little pits on its surface that serve as nucleation sites. Once the Mentos are dropped into the soda, the bubbles stick to those sites and quickly rise to the surface. The weight of the Mentos drives them to the bottom of the bottle. Then, the gas that is released by the Mentos forces the soda to shoot out of the bottle in a powerful geyser.

Is there a Mentos and Coke video?

This video shows how to do the Mentos and Coke experiment using just a few simple ingredients and supplies.

Materials Needed

To do the Mentos and Coke experiment, you will need:

• A roll or box of mint-flavored Mentos
• 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola (aka Coke)
• Sheet of paper to roll into a tube OR pre-made geyser tube

Our free recording sheet is also helpful—fill out the form on this page to get it.

Mentos and Coke Experiment Steps

1. make a paper tube by taking a piece of paper and wrapping it around a roll of mentos, then taping it in place. pull the mentos out. alternatively, you can use a premade geyser tube available from amazon or other retailers..

2. If using a geyser tube, load the Mentos. If using a homemade paper roll, drop the Mentos into the roll while holding the bottom closed with your finger.

3. Placing a 2-liter bottle of Coke on a flat surface, remove the cap, and drop the Mentos into the open Coke bottle.

Grab our free Mentos and Coke experiment worksheet!

Fill out the form on this page to get your worksheet. The worksheet asks kids to guess the correct order of the steps in the experiment. Next, kids must make a prediction about what they think will happen. They can use the provided spaces to draw what happens before and after they add the Mentos. Did their predictions come true?

Additional Reflection Questions

• What happened when we added the Mentos to the Coke?
• What difference do you think the temperature of the Coke makes?
• What do you think would happen if we used different-flavored Mentos, like fruit?
• What do you think would happen if we used a different soda other than Coke?
• What do you think would happen if you use Diet Coke?

Can the Mentos and Coke experiment be used for a science fair?

Yes! If you want to do the Mentos and Coke experiment for a science fair, we recommend switching up some of the variables. For example: Does the temperature of the Coke matter? Does the brand of soda matter? Will generic soda produce the same results as the brand-name soda? What happens if you use fruit-flavored Mentos? What happens if you use Diet Coke instead of regular? Form a hypothesis about how changing the variables will impact the experiment. Good luck!

Looking for more experiment ideas? Check out our  big list of experiment ideas here.

Plus, be sure to  subscribe to our newsletters  for more articles like this., you might also like.

61 Wet and Wild Outdoor Science Experiments and Activities

The whole world is one big science classroom. Continue Reading

Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. 5335 Gate Parkway, Jacksonville, FL 32256

Gummy Bear Experiment

Osmosis can be a difficult concept for kids to understand. I’ve always found that visual explanations really hit home with kids and help them to understand. Today we have a growing gummy bear experiment that is a perfect compliment to our Gummy Mummy experiment that explores the science of desiccation and diffusion. Because gummy bears are made of gelatin they will not dissolve in water like other candy will. They will however absorb liquids and change in shape and size. We’ve set up an experiment with four different liquids to see the difference in how the gummy bears are able to absorb each and how they change over the course of the day.

Great Growing Gummies – Gummy Bear Osmosis Experiment

What you will discover in this article!

Disclaimer: This article may contain commission or affiliate links. As an Amazon Influencer I earn from qualifying purchases. Not seeing our videos? Turn off any adblockers to ensure our video feed can be seen. Or visit our YouTube channel to see if the video has been uploaded there. We are slowly uploading our archives. Thanks!

What is Osmosis?

Scientifically, Osmosis is when solvent molecules (usually water) cross a semipermeable membrane from an area of lower solute concentration to an area of higher solute concentration. This creates equilibrium between the solute and solvent, balancing the concentration of solutes on both sides of the membrane. Osmosis is a passive process in that it requires no energy from the cell to occur.

Now – that’s a lot of big words and concepts so let’s break down that vocabulary:

Solvent : substance able to dissolve other substances. Solute : a dissolved substance Membrane : a thin, soft flexible sheet or layer especially of a plant or animal part Semi-Permeable Membrane : a membrane that only allows certain substances to pass through. Concentration : the amount of a component in a given substance. Equilibrium : a state of adjustment between opposing or divergent influences or elements

Gummy Bear Osmosis Lab

Gummy Bears Small Clear Bowls or Jars Water Sparkling Water White Vinegar Oil

I like to start this in the morning so you can check on it throughout the day and see the changes in the gummy bears.

STEP 1: Lay out four bowls on the table and put a gummy bear in each bowl. Then beside each bowl put another gummy bear of the same color so you can compare the two easily over the course of the day.

STEP 2: Measure equal amounts of each of your solvents. We used a quarter of a cup of water, sparkling water, white vinegar and oil and poured them over the gummy bears in the bowl.

STEP 3: This is a great time to have a discussion about osmosis and have your kids make predictions about what they think is going to happen in each bowl and why. What effect might each substance have on the gummy bear? Have the kids write down their predictions.

STEP 4: Set a timer for an hour and let the bears do their thing.

STEP 5: Check back each hour for the rest of the day and write down observations over the course of the day.

Gummy Bear Osmosis Experiment Results

Now the exciting part… the results of our experiment! Let’s take a look at the results individually first.

When gummy bears are soaked in water the bear will swell and grow in size. This is because the water will flow into the gummy bear through its semi-permeable membrane. The sugar molecules try to spread and dissolve but they can’t get out of the gelatin so they expand resulting in the gummy bear expanding.

Sparkling Water

Will have a similar result to water. The only difference is that the addition of carbon dioxide to the water can have an acidic effect on the bears which would cause the outside to soften allowing more water to be able to pass through the bear and it swells up more. You will also be able to observe the carbon dioxide bubble sticking to the outside of the bear.

White Vinegar

White Vinegar will have an acidic reaction with the gummy bear softening the outside of it, however the liquid is not as easily absorbed into the bear as water so the gummy may get softer but will not change in size as much as the bears soaked in water.

Because oil is polar it doesn’t mix well with water or other substances. The oil will have very little effect on the bears and you will not see much change if any at all. This gummy bear will also retain its color the best because the oil isn’t breaking down the bear or being absorbed into it so the structure and color will remain the same.

Comparing the Results

The most fascinating part of this experiment is comparing the results of the different solvents. Set the gummy bears out side by side with their controls so you can visually see the differences.

To get really scientific with your results, which is perfect for your older kids or kids needing more of a challenge, have them weigh and measure the gummies and compare results with the controls and each other.

You can also dissect the gummy bears and view them under a microscope to look for microscopic changes.

Extension Ideas

I think your kids will love this Gummy Bear Lab experiment on Osmosis! Encourage your students to get creative and add other variations like adding things like salt or baking soda to the water to see if it changes the results. Or try other solvents.

Want more osmosis experiments? Try this Rainbow Water Beads Experiment or the Bouncy Egg Experiment which involves a chemical reaction and osmosis.

Want more gummy science? Check out our Gummy Mummies . Or make your own gummies! You can check out these recipes on the site: Valentine’s Day Gummies , Star Wars Gummies , Rainbow Dragon Egg Gummies .

5 Days of Smart STEM Ideas for Kids

Get started in STEM with easy, engaging activities.

• For Teachers

• Everyday Activities
• Experiments

Mentos® Explosion

How does a soda geyser work?

Are you ready for a blast?

What is the secret behind the reaction between carbonated cola and little mint candies that makes such an explosion? Try it!

Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ot7rZQrEZ4A

You Will Need

At least one 2 liter of soda (we recommend diet cola)

At least 1 roll of mint Mentos® candy (original flavor, not fruity)

Geyser tube (You can purchase one online or make one yourself )

Large area outside that can get messy

Materials & Directions PDF

• Ask student to create a testable question (a hypothesis). Example: Will different numbers of Mentos® change the reaction?
• Place a 2-liter upright, with plenty of space around.
• Remove the Mentos® from the wrappings. You will use one whole pack for each 2-liter bottle, and will need to drop each pack into the bottle all at once. You can use a rolled paper tube or other funnel device to help do this quickly! Ours were commercially available “Geyser Tubes” purchased online.

• Working as fast as possible, open your soda bottle, and drop the whole pack of Mentos® into it.
• Step back and observe the explosion!
• For added scientific fun, experiment and investigate changing different variables. (Examples include but are not limited to: modifying the number of Mentos® dropped, changing the soda flavor, brand, or temperature)

Discovery Questions

Beginning the experiment, during the experiment, after the experiment, how it works.

A carbonated beverage, like soda, is packed with carbon dioxide gas that is dissolved into the soda solution and bonds with water. While the soda is in the bottle, the gas is kept in solution by the pressurized conditions inside the bottle. To create bubbles, the carbon dioxide needs to interact with itself, which means that its bonds with the water in the soda must be broken. A Mentos® candy can help with this.

Each Mentos® candy has thousands of small pores on its surface which disrupt the polar attractions between water molecules, creating thousands of ideal nucleation sites for the gas molecules to congregate. This means that each tiny pore acts like a place where the physical reaction can get a kick start; this is where a bubble of carbon dioxide gas can form and escape!

As the Mentos® candy sinks in the bottle of soda, the candy causes the production of more and more carbon dioxide bubbles. The buoyancy of the bubbles and their growth will eventually cause the bubbles to leave the nucleation site and rise to the surface of the soda to escape.

Bubbles will continue to form on the porous surface and the process will repeat, creating an enormous foamy geyser!

• svg]:fill-accent-900">

Stay-at-home science project: Enlarge gummy bears to reveal the secrets of osmosis

By Rachel Feltman

Posted on May 4, 2020 4:00 PM EDT

Welcome to PopSci’s at-home science projects series . On weekdays at noon, we’ll be posting new projects that use ingredients you can buy at the grocery store. Show us how it went by tagging your project on social media using #popsciprojects.

Gummy bears are delicious. That’s not up for debate (though you’re welcome to eat a few to prove the hypothesis). But they’re also the perfect critters to help demonstrate a process that makes life as we know it possible: Osmosis.

Believe it or not, osmosis also happens when you drop gummy bears into water, revealing the most basic inner workings of your body’s cells. Just add water and a spoonful of salt to see it happen before your eyes.

• Time: 5 minutes of prep, and 3 to 9 hours of waiting
• Difficulty: easy

What you’ll need

• Gummy bears, preferably dark in color
• Three small bowls
• 2 tablespoons of salt
• (Optional) Ruler
• (Optional) Kitchen scale

Instructions

1. Fill two of your bowls with cool water. Room temperature is fine, but keep away from hot water—it’ll melt your gummy bears.

2. Add the salt to the first bowl. The second should just contain water.

3. Plop one gummy bear into each bowl. Make sure they’re fully submerged. Leave the bowls somewhere they won’t be disturbed. Gummy bears are tempting—even when they’re salty and soggy!

• Note : We tried different types of gummies (including the sour kind coated with mouth-puckering crystals), and we came to the conclusion that the ideal gummy bears for this experiment are dark in color and chewy instead of soft—just the classic gummy bear . A darker color will not dilute so much as to turn the gummy bear totally clear as it absorbs water, and the thicker gelatin mixture will make the candy less likely to fall apart when you take it out for observation. Also, stay away from sour gummies and those with unusual flavor additives, since they are less likely to yield the intended results.

4. Set aside a third gummy as your experimental control. We recommend you do this before you even think about eating the rest of your gummy bears. It’d be tragic to suddenly realize you ate them all and you no longer have a control for your experiment. Keep it dry.

5. Wait for three hours.

6. Check back in on your waterlogged candies. You can scoop them out with a spoon and observe them on a paper towel if you so choose, but be sure to return them to their proper bowls. Take note of how the gummies have changed—write down your observations so you can contrast them with the end results. You can check in again after the next three hours.

7. (Optional) Take some measurements. If your little experimenters need more of a challenge, you can have them measure the bears with rulers and/or kitchen scales, and calculate just how much size and mass the bears have lost or gained.

8. Wait another six hours. The full transformation should be complete around hour nine.

9. Retrieve your bears from their bowls. Use a small spoon and line them up on a plate or paper towel to see how much they’ve changed. The gummy in plain water should be much larger than the unsoaked candy, while the salted water should have kept its bear roughly the same size—unless it’s caused it to shrink. More on that later.

10. Fill a third bowl with cool water and a tablespoon of salt. Place the expanded, waterlogged gummy bear into it and observe it every few hours. It should get noticeably smaller as it soaks.

How it works

Osmosis is the movement of water through a semipermeable membrane—that is, a material with holes large enough to let some things in, but small enough to keep others out. In this process, water moves through the membrane without force or energy, to make water concentration versus other molecules roughly the same on either side.

This process is important in keeping us alive. The outer membrane of our cells is semipermeable and allows small molecules like water and oxygen to pass through while keeping all the cell’s organelles protected and in place. When it’s time to eliminate waste, the cell will start pushing the toxic molecules out, while absorbing water from our blood through osmosis. Once the cell has balanced its water concentration to the one outside of it, it will stop taking in more liquid, thus preventing the cell from bursting.

Gummy bears are made of gelatin and sugar, and the proteins that make up gelatin are very similar to the outer membranes of our cells. Just like them, the gummy bear’s gelatin “skin” will allow water and other small molecules to pass through while keeping larger ones contained—in this case, those larger molecules are the sugar that make gummy bears taste so good.

When you place a gummy bear into water, the sugar molecules will try to spread out and disperse evenly through the water bowl. But the gelatin membrane won’t let them out. That sugar also makes the gummy have a relatively low concentration of water compared to the liquid around it. Osmosis seeks to correct this imbalance, so water will keep pushing into the gummy and through the membrane until the concentration is the same on either side of the gelatin. This means your gummy is going to absorb lots and lots of water.

In a solution of water and salt, the bowl and the bear have similar water concentrations, so the candy may stay about the same size or even shrink, if the water is salty enough. Just as the sugar in the bear lowers its water concentration, the salt in the bowl means a lower ratio of water to other molecules. As a response, the bear may push out water in order to dilute the liquid inside the bowl. If you place the water-swelled bear into a salt solution, those extra water molecules will leave the bear to lower the salt concentration in the bowl.

If you have time (and gummies) to spare, you can elaborate on this experiment by testing different salt concentrations. You can line up several bowls with increasing quantities of salt in the same amount of water. The more salt you add, the more your candy should shrink.

Coke and Mentos Experiment – Easy STEM for Kids

Categories Science , STEM

The Coke and Mentos Experiment is an easy science experiment to do with kids of all ages. Even toddlers and preschoolers will shriek with delight as they watch this chemical reaction take place.

Disclosure: Adult supervision is required for all activities at all times.

Table of Contents

• More STEM activities to try
• Materials needed
• Watch the video

Instructions

• Experiment ideas
• How does it work?

STEM Activities for Kids

Help your toddlers and preschoolers become the next new scientist or engineer with these fun STEM activities. These are great for getting little learners involved in STEM through hands-on play.

• How to Make A Pom Pom Shooter
• Floating City – STEM activity for Kids
• Building Shapes – STEM for Kids
• Magnet Exploration

For more ideas check out 34 STEM Experiments for Toddlers .

Materials Needed

• A large bottle of coke
• A packet of mentos
• A plastic tub
• Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks (optional)

Watch the Video

Coke and Mentos Experiment Instructions

1: use the hot glue gun to glue 6 mentos together..

You can always use more or less mentos if you need to, the number of mentos will depend on how large your bottle of coke is. 

Gluing the mentos together is an optional step, but one that I find invaluable when doing this experiment with toddlers and preschoolers. Because the reaction happens instantly, it’s hard to drop all of the mentos in before the coke starts to come out of the bottle.

By creating a mentos tower, the kids can drop all of the mentos in at once.

2. Place your bottle of coke in a large tub. 

Once again the tub is optional and is only used to help clean up afterwards. If you prefer, you can do this experiment outside on the grass. Just make sure that your outdoor area has a flat surface you can use. If the bottle of soda falls over before you’ve dropped in the mentos candy, you’re going to be disappointed.

3. Drop your mentos tower into the bottle of coke, stand back and enjoy.

Different Ways to turn this into an Experiment

If you are doing this experiment with older children, you can use the scientific method to see which conditions affect the height of the geyser.

Idea 1. Change the Temperature.

Does cold, room temperature, or warm soda affect the amazing eruption? Place a bottle in the fridge, one in the sun and one at room temperature to find out if any of these temperatures create a large eruption.

Idea 2. How many mentos are needed in a coke and mentos experiment?

You’ll need at least 7 – 8 mentos for this activity. However you can always experiment with a different number of mentos to find out. Set up several soda bottles and then place a different number of mentos in each bottle and measure the fountain height to see which worked best.

Idea 3. Which soda works best with mentos?

You can use any type of soda pop you like for this experiment. While it’s believed that Diet Coke has the most impressive results, the truth is that there isn’t much difference in the height of the eruption between diet and regular soda.

The main difference is when cleaning up. Regular coke becomes sticky because of the high sugar content. While diet soda instead contains artificial sweeteners. Cleaning up the mess is another reason why outdoors is the perfect place to do this soda experiment.

However, you can always experiment with different types of soda and see what happens. Mountain dew, classic diet coke, orange soda are all options you can try.

How does the coke and mentos experiment work? Coke and Mentos Explained

Coke, and other carbonated beverages are filled with dissolved carbon dioxide gas. This gas has formed bonds with the water in the soda. 

In order for the mentos reaction to take place, the gas needs to break the bonds with the water and interact with the rest of the carbon dioxide gas in the coke. When carbon dioxide interacts with itself it forms gas bubbles. That is why we can see bubbles form when we pour a glass of coke to drink or shake the bottle up.

When you drop a tower of mentos into the bottle, they break the bonds that hold the carbon dioxide gas and water together. Because the mentos tower sinks to the bottom of the bottle, instead of floating, this means that the whole bottle will undergo this reaction at once.

These bubbles come rushing out at great speed and because the coke bottle has a small opening, the bubbles rush high into the air. Creating an eruption effect.

While toddlers and preschoolers aren’t going to understand why this chemical reaction takes place, it’s still cool to learn as an adult. I love Steve Spangler’s explanation of the chemistry involved in this STEM idea.

Are you going to try the Coke and Mentos Experiment with your kids? Don’t forget to Pin the idea for later.

Coke and Mentos Experiment

The  Coke and Mentos Experiment  is an easy science experiment to do with kids of all ages. Even toddlers and preschoolers will shriek with delight as they watch this chemical reaction take place.

• Use the hot glue gun to glue 7 - 8 mentos together. This is optional, it just helps to add all of the mentos into the bottle at the same time.
• Place your bottle of coke in a large tub. This is optional, it just makes cleaning up more easy.
• Drop your mentos tower into the bottle.
• Stand back and enjoy.

If you are doing this STEM activity with older kids, you can experiment with a few different ideas to introduce them to the scientific method.

• Change the temperature of the coke. Experiment to see if cold, warm or room temperature coke changes the reaction.
• Change the number of mentos.
• Experiment to see which soda works best. Coke, diet coke or any other kind of soda. Which one has the best results?

More Play Based Learning for Kids

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Please email or share this article!

Mentos and Coke Experiment – How to Do It! [Full Guide]

Have you ever taken a can of soda, shook it up, and given it to your friend?

What happens?

Well, it’s probably not pretty. And you may not have a friend for a day or two until they forgive you.

But making soda explode is fun. And there is a way to make it really go boom if you have a few pennies and a bit of time on your hands.

Note – be sure to only try this experiment with a responsible adult!

It really only takes a few minutes to setup the mentos and coke volcano experiment. And it’s a great way to learn about chemical reactions.

It’s also a lot less work than your classic paper mache volcano. So, if you want some quick and easy fun, get some paper towels because we’re about to make a sweet mess.

What Will I Need For The Mentos And Coke Volcano?

There really aren’t that many supplies you need to make a mentos and coke volcano.

But here’s the list:

An outdoor area with no ceiling or roof

One roll of Mentos candies

A two-liter bottle of diet soda (diet soda makes for a much better reaction, but you can use regular soda if you like. It just won’t be nearly as awesome.)

A tube the width of the Mentos . It needs to be wide enough to use as loader for the Mentos

An index card (picture below)

The Mentos And Coke Volcano Experiment

Now it’s time to actually run the experiment, but first, we need to make a hypothesis.

The Hypothesis

The scientific method is an important way scientists make observations and come to conclusions.

Part of the scientific method is making a prediction called a hypothesis .

Write down what you think will happen when placing the Mentos in the soda bottles.

Do a little bit of research about the ingredients of Mentos and soda.

This will help you make an informed guess as to what will happen.

Now You Test The Hypothesis

In an experiment, you have two groups: an experimental group, and a control group.

Open the soda bottle, set it down and write down what you observe about it.

This will count as your control group. It’s what happens when you put nothing in the soda.

Now take the Mentos in your tube loader.

Put the index card on top of the tube loader and turn the tube upside down.

The candy should not fall out.

Be ready. The reaction happens fast, so don’t have your face over the bottle.

Place the index card and candies over the mouth of the bottle. Make sure the candies are in line with the mouth of the bottle.

You want the candies going in the bottle and not falling over the side.

Now remove the index card and let candies fall in and step away from the Mentos and coke volcano.

Write down what happened when you dropped the Mentos in the coke.

Did what you hypothesize happen? Compare your notes on the experiment to the control group.

Let us know what you observed in your science experiment!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION

1. can i use any type of mentos candy for the experiment.

Yes, you can use any type of Mentos candy for the experiment. The most commonly used Mentos candies are the original mint-flavored ones, but you can also use fruit-flavored or other varieties. The key factor is the rough surface of the Mentos candy, which helps to create nucleation sites for the carbon dioxide bubbles in the Coke. This happens because Coke contains dissolved carbon dioxide gas.

2. What happens if I use diet Coke instead of regular Coke?

If you use cold diet Coke instead of regular Coke in the Mentos experiment, you can still expect an explosive reaction. However, the reaction may not be as vigorous as with regular Coke. Diet Coke contains artificial sweeteners like aspartame, which may slightly affect the reaction. Nonetheless, the combination of Mentos and diet Coke can still produce a notable geyser, so it’s worth giving it a try. SO it will be the mentos geyser experiment.

3. Is the Mentos and Coke experiment suitable for children to try at home?

The Coke and Mentos experiment can be a fun and engaging activity for children to try at home. However, ensuring proper adult supervision and following safety precautions is important. Conducting the mentos experiment outdoors or in a well-ventilated area is recommended to avoid any potential mess or accidental spills. Additionally, remind children not to consume the Coke or Mentos mixture, as it is unsafe for ingestion. By taking these precautions, the Coke and Mentos experiment can provide children an educational and entertaining experience.

Leave a Comment

Get Your ALL ACCESS Shop Pass here →

Gummy Bear Osmosis Experiment

Learn about the process of osmosis when you try this easy gummy bear osmosis experiment with the kids. Watch your gummy bears grow as you investigate what liquid makes them grow the biggest. We are always on the hunt for simple science experiments and this one is just super fun and easy!

Explore Science With Gummy Bears

A fun gummy bear experiment all in the name of science and learning! There are so many simple science experiments that are quick and easy to set up for young children. Older children can easily add data collection, graphing and charts to turn this fun edible science experiment into more of a challenge!

Grab a bag of gummy bears or alternatively, you can make your own homemade gummy bears with our easy 3 ingredient gummy bear recipe .

Then head into the kitchen to grab your supplies and let’s find out what happens when you add gummy bears to different liquids. Watch your gummy bears as you investigate what makes gummy bears grow the biggest.

LOOK: 15 Amazing Candy Science Experiments

Set Up A Gummy Bear Osmosis Lab

Let’s find out what liquid makes gummy bears grow the biggest! Remember, the dependent variable is the size of the gummy bears and the independent variable is the liquid you use. Learn more about variables in science.

• Gummy bears
• baking soda
• ruler or measuring scale
• optional – stopwatch

TIP: Extend the experiment by using additional liquids such as juice, vinegar, oil, milk, baking soda mixed with water etc.

Instructions:

STEP 1. Carefully measure and pour the same amount of water into 3 cups. Add the same amount of distilled water to another cup if using. Pour the same amount of vinegar into another cup.

STEP 2. Add sugar to one cup of water, baking soda and salt in another. Mix well.

STEP 3. Weigh and/or measure each gummy bear beforehand. Use the printable worksheet above to record your measurements.

STEP 4. Add a gummy bear to each cup.

STEP 5. Then set the cups aside and wait to observe what will happen. Check them again after 6 hours, 12 hours and 24 hours.

TIP: This gummy bear experiment takes at least 12 hours to work!

STEP 6. Remove your gummy bear from the liquid and carefully measure and/or weigh each one. What liquid made the gummy bears grow the biggest? Why was that?

Free Printable Gummy Bear Lab Worksheet

Use the free gummy bear data sheet below to track your results! It’s perfect for older kids to add to a science notebook.

How Does Osmosis Occur In Gummy Bears?

The process of moving water across a semi-permeable membrane from a low concentrated solution to a high concentrated solution is called osmosis . A semi-permeable membrane is a thin sheet of tissue or layer of cells acting as a wall that allows only some molecules like water molecules to pass through.

The main ingredients in gummy bears are gelatin, sugar and flavoring. The semi-permeable membrane in gummy bears is the gelatin.

CHECK OUT: How To Make Slime With Gelatin

It is the gelatin that also stops the gummy bears from dissolving in liquids, other than an acidic solution such as vinegar.

When you place gummy bears in water, the water moves into them through osmosis since gummy bears don’t contain water. The water is moving from a low concentration solution to a high concentration solution.

Learn more about osmosis with our potato osmosis lab.

Using The Scientific Method With Kids

The scientific method is a process or method of research. A problem is identified, information about the problem is gathered, a hypothesis or question is formulated from the information, and the hypothesis is put to test with an experiment to prove or disprove its validity.

Sounds heavy… What in the world does that mean?!?

The scientific method can simply be used as a guide to help lead the discovery process. You don’t need to try and solve the world’s biggest science questions! The scientific method is all about studying and learning things right around you.

As kids develop practices that involve creating, gathering data, evaluating, analyzing, and communicating, they can apply these critical thinking skills to any situation.

💡To learn more about the scientific method and how to use it, CLICK HERE .

Even though the scientific method seems like it is just for big kids, this method can be used with kids of all ages! You can have a casual conversation with younger kids or do a more formal notebook entry with older kids!

Gummy Bear Science Fair Project

Science projects are an excellent way for older kids to show what they know about science. They can also be used in various environments, including classrooms, homeschools, and groups.

Kids can take everything they have learned about using the scientific method , stating a hypothesis, choosing variables , and analyzing and presenting data.

💡 Sample Hypothesis: If a gummy bear is placed in water overnight, then it will increase in size due to the process of osmosis, where water molecules move from an area of higher concentration (the water) to an area of lower concentration (inside the gummy bear).

Want to turn this gummy bear osmosis experiment into an awesome science fair project? Check out these helpful resources.

• Science Project Tips From A Teacher
• Science Fair Board Ideas
• Easy Science Fair Projects

More Fun Candy Science Experiments

• Try a candy taste test with chocolate.
• Why do the colors not mix in this skittles experiment?
• Dissolving candy corn experiment is fun to do !
• Make a coke and mentos eruption !
• What happens when you add pop rocks to soda?
• Try this floating M&M experiment.

Helpful Science Resources

Here are a few resources that will help you introduce science more effectively to your kiddos or students and feel confident yourself when presenting materials. You’ll find helpful free printables throughout.

• Best Science Practices (as it relates to the scientific method)
• Science Vocabulary
• 8 Science Books for Kids
• All About Scientists
• Science Supplies List
• Science Tools for Kids

Printable Science Projects For Kids

If you’re looking to grab all of our printable science projects in one convenient place plus exclusive worksheets and bonuses like a STEAM Project pack, our Science Project Pack is what you need! Over 300+ Pages!

• 90+ classic science activities  with journal pages, supply lists, set up and process, and science information.  NEW! Activity-specific observation pages!
• Best science practices posters  and our original science method process folders for extra alternatives!
• Be a Collector activities pack  introduces kids to the world of making collections through the eyes of a scientist. What will they collect first?
• Know the Words Science vocabulary pack  includes flashcards, crosswords, and word searches that illuminate keywords in the experiments!
• My science journal writing prompts  explore what it means to be a scientist!!
• Bonus STEAM Project Pack:  Art meets science with doable projects!
• Bonus Quick Grab Packs for Biology, Earth Science, Chemistry, and Physics

Subscribe to receive a free 5-Day STEM Challenge Guide

~ projects to try now ~.

Science Project Ideas

Gummy Bear Experiment

The gummy bear experiment is a fun activity that teaches the basic concept of osmosis to the little ones in an easy manner. They will also be thrilled at the idea that their favorite gummy bears could teach them a lesson or two in science.

Gummy Bear Science Project Instructions

Hypothesis for growing/shrinking gummy bears.

When a gummy bear is placed in a hypotonic solution (e.g. water) then it will increase in mass and volume. On the other hand, its mass and volume decrease when placed in a hypertonic solution (e.g. salt water). Hypertonic refers to a higher concentration of solutes and hypotonic is just the reverse.

Things Needed

• Physical balance or digital weighing machine
• Sieve, plastic fork or screen
• Graph paper
• Measure the dimensions (length, breadth and height) of the bear with a scale. Measure its mass with the balance.
• Fill the bowl with water.
• Completely immerse the gummy bear in the water.
• Let the bowl sit overnight in a place away from direct sunlight.
• Next day, lift the bear from the water with a plastic fork, sieve or screen.
• Record the dimensions and mass of the bear again.
• Do the same observation each day for a couple of days more.
• Plot a graph with the time in hours along the X-axis (the dependent variable) and the mass or weight of the gummy bear along the Y-axis (independent variable). Check the nature of the graph.

Things You Can Try

• Set up a series of bowls on the table and fill them with different solutions like that of baking soda, vinegar, salt, distilled water, etc. Make similar observations as above for each one of them. Compare your results.
• Also, check if the taste and/or color of the bears have changed.

Gummy Bear Osmosis Video

How does it work.

The ingredients of gummy bears are sugar, water, and gelatin, with little water content. Due to the process of osmosis, i.e., the movement of water molecules through a selectively permeable membrane from an area of high concentration to that of a lower concentration, the bear starts to grow. However, it doesn’t get dissolved as the gelatin is insoluble in water.

On trying out the different ideas, you will find that the degree of expansion of the candy depends on the liquid on which it is kept. However, vinegar, which is actually an acid, can dissolve the candy .

This simple trick can prove to be a cool science fair idea. The kids will be enthralled to display their knowledge to the audience in a fun way.

References:

https://biozone.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/4/2/274298/gummy_bear_osmosis.pdf

https://tinkerlab.com/incredible-growing-gummy-bears/

https://www.childrensmuseum.org/blog/saturday-science-growing-gummy-bears

https://www.homeschool.com/blog/index.php/2014/04/homeschool-science-gummy-bear-osmosis/

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Elementary Homeschool

Gummy Bear Science Project

Are you wondering what a gummy bear experiment is? What liquid makes a gummy bear grow? Or what happens when you put gummy bears in water?

Did you know a gummy bear will grow when placed in a variety of liquids by using the process known as osmosis? Since the gummy bear water was removed when it was created, when you place a gummy bear in water the water will move into the bear by osmosis. But in which liquid will the gummy bear grow the most? Find out as we use the scientific method in this gummy bear science experiment !

Undoubtedly, this is one of our favorite science experiments of all time, we call it Gummy Bear Osmosis.  One of our contributors, Jordyn C. Jordyn , performed this gummy bear osmosis experiment with her children, and we will share her results with you below, but if you’d like to perform your own experiment, here is what you will need.

Scientific Terms to Know For the Gummy Bear Science Experiment

• osmosis – passing of a material (like water) through a membrane (a gummy bear)
• equilibrium – a state where opposite forces are balanced so one isn’t stronger than the other
• membrane – a thin, soft layer of material that separates two things
• cells – basic building blocks of all things
• semi-permeable – only certain, small molecules can get through
• solute – a substance that dissolves (like sugar in water)
• solvent – a substance that is able to dissolve other substances (like the water that dissolves the sugar)
• gelatin – a food ingredient made from collagen that makes liquids become squishy solids (like jello, marshmallows, gummies, etc.)
• gummy bear – a gelatin substance with no water

Science Behind the Gummy Bear Experiment Explained

This science experiment lab is supporting the concepts of osmosis, equilibrium, solutions, solutes, and solvents . A solution is a homogenous mixture of one or more substances. The parts that are mixed to achieve a solution are called the solute and the solvents .

In most cases, a sugary substance (sugar or even sugary candy) will dissolve quickly and easily in water. When you dissolve sugar in water, the water becomes the solvent and the sugar is the solute . While there can only be one solvent in a solution, but there can be many solutes (gummy bears, sugar, candy, etc).  However, in this science lab, we will be using water and several other types of solvents like vinegar, milk, saltwater, or other solvents (liquids) you have on hand to use in the experiment.

What Is Happening In this Gummy Bear Experiment

In this experiment, the water or liquid can enter the gummy through the membrane without letting out the sugar. The change that will occur to the gummy bears is osmosis and the process that it uses is equilibrium .  This process of equilibrium allows water to diffuse from a higher area of concentration to a lower area of concentration. For a visual explanation, you can watch this science experiment video , or use this Gummy Bear Chemistry PowerPoint .

The point of this science lab experiment is to understand the process of osmosis and equilibrium . Watch this video on osmosis before the experiment to help the kids understand the background concepts thoroughly. Then take time to print out the Gummy Bear Osmosis Lab Printables or the Science Experiment Journal Kit at the bottom of this post.  In additon, you may also want to discuss the concept of semi-permeable membranes and, if your homeschoolers are old enough, you could even try this experiment using eggs and other solvents as well! In fact, we really enjoyed this osmosis experiment using eggs .

Additionally, it is a good idea to use the same color gummy bear throughout the experiment. We know colors are fun, but when you use different colors, that adds a variable to the experiment. Or in other words, it adds another option or reason for a difference in the end result. However, if we use all the same color and same size gummy bears, then the end results of our experiment will be more reliable.

Materials You Need for The Gummy Bear Science Project

• Gummy bears (for experimentation and comparison…and maybe an extra pack for snacking)
• A small glass for each water/solution
• Baking soda
• Paper towels
• Kitchen scale

Instructions for Gummy Bear Experiment

• Then, add a half cup of water to the tap water glass.
• Then, add a half cup of water and 1 tablespoon of salt to the saltwater glass. Stir the salt until it is dissolved.
• Next, add a half cup of water and 1 tablespoon of sugar to the sugar water glass. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
• Then, add a half cup of water and 1 tablespoon of baking soda to the baking soda water glass. Stir until the baking soda is dissolved.
• Then, add a half cup of your soda of choice to the soda glass.
• Next, add a half cup of vinegar to the vinegar glass.
• Finally, add a half cup of milk to the milk glass.

**Any of these liquids can be omitted or changed according to your preference.**

• Weigh and measure a gummy bear and record results.
• Add one gummy bear to each glass of liquid.
• Set a timer for 12 hours.
• After the timer goes off, remove each gummy bear from its solution, weigh, measure, and compare to a new gummy bear.
• Discuss the results and complete the worksheet (found below).

**To extend the experiment, return the gummies to their original glasses for an additional 12 hours and check results again.**

One Family’s Gummy Bear Osmosis Experiment

“Science is fun at our house, and we decided to try the dissolving gummy bear experiment. We decided to try different liquids and solutions to see if we would get different results. First, we measured and weighed the gummy bears and recorded our results. Next, we put a gummy bear in plain water, sugar water, saltwater, vinegar, milk, and baking soda water. We let them sit for 12 hours and then checked on them the next morning to see what had happened. Testing Our Gummy Bear Osmosis Lab Results We decided to try different liquids and solutions (further expanding on our solubility lesson a.k.a. gummy bear experiment) to see if we would get different results.  First, we measured and weighed the gummy bears and recorded our results. Next, we put a gummy bear in plain water, sugar water, saltwater, vinegar, milk, and baking soda water.  We let them sit for 12 hours and then checked on them in the morning to see what had happened. The results were quite surprising! The kids all wanted to know what had happened and why they hadn’t dissolved like other water experiments we had tried. Scientific Conclusions For The Gummy Bear Experiment The results were quite surprising to my kids! Instead of dissolving, the gummies grew, some to almost triple their original size! We compared our new gummies to their unchanged counterparts and noted our scientific observations including weight and measurements. The gummy bear that absorbed the most was the one put in plain water. The one that grew the least was the one put in saltwater. Interestingly, the gummy bears remained completely intact, just larger, with the exception of the one put in vinegar. The gummy bear we put in vinegar did expand, but lost all of its gummy bear shape and just became a blob. We believe that the acid in the vinegar dissolved the gummy bear completely. The answer to our gummy bear experiment was simple.   Osmosis !  I explained that osmosis is when a liquid (usually water) moves from one side of a membrane to another. Science is All About Trying Again I was met with blank stares and crickets….hmmmm….let’s try this again…..I told them to imagine themselves at the Haunted Mansion at Disney on a really crowded day. They take you into the little room and cram you all together before the ride starts. Think of how uncomfortable you feel pushing against other people, just wanting to get out, when finally they open the door and you are able to move away from other people and through the door.  This is exactly the same as osmosis .  You are water molecules , with the door being the membrane . The water molecules are all crammed up, so they move to where there are none of them, through the membrane. Then they got it!  I explained that the gummy bears were not solutes, they were actually polymers and therefore were able to absorb the water by osmosis.  Cool!! We got out our sheet and compared our new gummies to their unchanged counterparts and noted our scientific observations including weight and measurements.  You can clearly see that the gummy bear that absorbed the most was the one put in plain water, while the one that was the one put in saltwater changed the least. Interestingly, the gummy bears remained completely intact, just grew larger, with the exception of the one put in vinegar. We posit that the acid in the vinegar dissolved the gummy bear completely into this gummy blob. This science experiment was so easy and so much fun! The kids loved it, and it was awesome to see that they actually retained what they learned. It was the perfect way to bring in some fun STEM learning to our homeschool science. Our gummy bear science project was a success!” – Jordyn C. 

Gummy Bear Science Project Results. Why Did the Bears Get so Big?

Well, we already know from the introduction that water diffuses from an area of high concentration of water molecules to an area of low water concentration. At the beginning of the experiment, there is less water and more gelatin inside each gummy bear. As time goes on, this changes and the gummy bear begins to act as a sponge.

In the last part of this experiment, water moves into the Gummy Bear, clearly where there are fewer water molecules. Therefore, making it swell up. In fact, the water keeps moving until the water molecules are evenly spaced out (for example: when they have reached equilibrium). In the end, the molecules will stop diffusing when they reach equilibrium or when there is the same concentration of water molecules in the gummy bears as there are outside of the gummy bears.

Start Here: Print Your Gummy Bear Experiment Worksheet pdf

Obviously, every good experiment makes use of lab notes. Along with the steps above, we’ve compiled gummy bear experiment notes that will help you work through this experiment and learn the science behind it. This set includes Gummy Bear Science:

• Terms to define
• Experiment chart
• Experiment Follow-up Questions

Additional Science Lab Experiments To Try After The Gummy Bear Experiment

If your kiddos loved doing this lab, then you’ll want to explore our collection of fun and free science-based lesson plans for kids who hate science ! We know how difficult it is to plan and execute science experiments while you are homeschooling multiple children. It’s so important to make the experience unbelievably fun homeschool science and to fun ways to bring science labs into everyday life. We have three homeschool science experiments that are sure to help you do that with minimal effort. Our simple home science experiments will have your kids laughing and wanting more. Try our science slime experiments and the soggy cereal science experiment as your next adventure in homeschool science labs!

Jamie Gaddy

Jamie Gaddy, B.S., M.Ed., Ed.D. has been a college education professor for over 17 years. Education has been a part of her life in both the classroom and as a principal. Six children later found her dissatisfied with traditional school and homeschool became the better fit. She is also a pastor’s wife, editor, and entrepreneur who now homeschools four of her six children in Georgia. Jamie loves to share about her homeschool experience to help other homeschoolers find success. Connect with her at [email protected] .

Latest Posts

Can you believe it's already September, and actually fall? Of course, for some of us, it still feels like the middle of summer. But we're longing for the cool crisp mornings, falling leaves,…

Guest post by Heidi Rosenberg Education is the best legacy that parents can pass on to their children. However, the value of this legacy depends on the kind of education parents can afford…

Post Sponsored by KaiPod Learning As a homeschooling parent, you've taken bold steps to provide your child with a unique, tailored education. You are part of a pioneering group of educators…

Sciencing_Icons_Science SCIENCE

Sciencing_icons_biology biology, sciencing_icons_cells cells, sciencing_icons_molecular molecular, sciencing_icons_microorganisms microorganisms, sciencing_icons_genetics genetics, sciencing_icons_human body human body, sciencing_icons_ecology ecology, sciencing_icons_chemistry chemistry, sciencing_icons_atomic & molecular structure atomic & molecular structure, sciencing_icons_bonds bonds, sciencing_icons_reactions reactions, sciencing_icons_stoichiometry stoichiometry, sciencing_icons_solutions solutions, sciencing_icons_acids & bases acids & bases, sciencing_icons_thermodynamics thermodynamics, sciencing_icons_organic chemistry organic chemistry, sciencing_icons_physics physics, sciencing_icons_fundamentals-physics fundamentals, sciencing_icons_electronics electronics, sciencing_icons_waves waves, sciencing_icons_energy energy, sciencing_icons_fluid fluid, sciencing_icons_astronomy astronomy, sciencing_icons_geology geology, sciencing_icons_fundamentals-geology fundamentals, sciencing_icons_minerals & rocks minerals & rocks, sciencing_icons_earth scructure earth structure, sciencing_icons_fossils fossils, sciencing_icons_natural disasters natural disasters, sciencing_icons_nature nature, sciencing_icons_ecosystems ecosystems, sciencing_icons_environment environment, sciencing_icons_insects insects, sciencing_icons_plants & mushrooms plants & mushrooms, sciencing_icons_animals animals, sciencing_icons_math math, sciencing_icons_arithmetic arithmetic, sciencing_icons_addition & subtraction addition & subtraction, sciencing_icons_multiplication & division multiplication & division, sciencing_icons_decimals decimals, sciencing_icons_fractions fractions, sciencing_icons_conversions conversions, sciencing_icons_algebra algebra, sciencing_icons_working with units working with units, sciencing_icons_equations & expressions equations & expressions, sciencing_icons_ratios & proportions ratios & proportions, sciencing_icons_inequalities inequalities, sciencing_icons_exponents & logarithms exponents & logarithms, sciencing_icons_factorization factorization, sciencing_icons_functions functions, sciencing_icons_linear equations linear equations, sciencing_icons_graphs graphs, sciencing_icons_quadratics quadratics, sciencing_icons_polynomials polynomials, sciencing_icons_geometry geometry, sciencing_icons_fundamentals-geometry fundamentals, sciencing_icons_cartesian cartesian, sciencing_icons_circles circles, sciencing_icons_solids solids, sciencing_icons_trigonometry trigonometry, sciencing_icons_probability-statistics probability & statistics, sciencing_icons_mean-median-mode mean/median/mode, sciencing_icons_independent-dependent variables independent/dependent variables, sciencing_icons_deviation deviation, sciencing_icons_correlation correlation, sciencing_icons_sampling sampling, sciencing_icons_distributions distributions, sciencing_icons_probability probability, sciencing_icons_calculus calculus, sciencing_icons_differentiation-integration differentiation/integration, sciencing_icons_application application, sciencing_icons_projects projects, sciencing_icons_news news.

• Share Tweet Email Print
• Home ⋅
• Science Fair Project Ideas for Kids, Middle & High School Students ⋅

Osmosis Experiments With Gummy Bears

Gummy Bear Science Experiments

Gummy bears offers kids a way to get interested in and understand osmosis – something about the brightly colored, tasty candy captivates young students. In osmosis experiments with gummy bears, the bears swell up to several times their normal size, which can be quite amusing and unexpected for kids and adults alike. Teachers like gummy bear osmosis experiments because they are simple, entertaining and easy to explain and understand.

Osmosis Terms

Understanding key terms is crucial to learn what happens during gummy bear osmosis experiments. Osmosis occurs when liquids flow through a semi-permeable membrane from a diluted to a concentrated environment. Semi-permeable membranes allow some molecules to pass through them – most frequently liquids – but not others. Scientists explain this by using the terms hypertonic and hypotonic: hypertonic solutions have higher concentrations of solutes – solids dissolved in liquids – while hypotonic ones have a comparatively lower concentration. Diffusion is the active movement of a substance from hypertonic to hypotonic, until an isotonic solution – equal concentration – is reached.

Gummy Bear Composition

Made from gelatin, water and a sweetener like sugar or corn syrup, gummy bears start as a liquid and cool into a chewy, gummy solution. The chewiness of gummy bears is due to the presence of gelatin, whose molecules are chain-like and create a solid matrix.

Gummy Bear Experiment: Tap Water

The first experiment involves soaking your gummy bears overnight in plain water. Prior to soaking, have your students measure the height, width, and depth of the gummy bear, and record this information in their lab books. Place the gummy bears in cups of water – one per student – and set aside. Then discuss hypotheses – what do the students think will happen to the bears? The next day, the bears will have expanded, as water moved by diffusion through the bear's semi-permeable membrane to reach an isotonic state where the concentration of water molecules inside and outside the bear were the same. The students should measure the bears again and use their before-and-after data to calculate the percentage of growth.

Gummy Bear Experiment: Salt Water I

Conduct the same experiment, this time soaking new gummy bears in salt water. Again ask your students to predict the outcome: Will the addition of salt change the outcome of the experiment in any way? Your students may be surprised at the results. New gummy bears soaked in salt water will shrink, but imperceptibly so. The bears' gelatin construction will cause it to hold its shape and size, for the most part, even when water leaves the bear.

Gummy Bear Experiment: Salt Water II

Soak the original, water-expanded gummy bears from your first experiment in salt water, and ask your students to predict the outcome. The bears will shrink as osmosis causes water to leave the gummy bear.

Related Articles

How to make an egg float using salt for a science project, osmosis science activities for kids, egg flotation science project procedures, osmosis egg experiments, second-grade science lessons using salt, why does an egg shrink in different solutions, science projects and research with salt, sugar, water..., science projects for 7 year olds, science project egg experiments, how to make an experiment with corn syrup, science project on how to float an egg, chemistry projects for diffusion in liquids, density experiments for elementary, density experiments for kids, experiments with salt melting ice, how to write a protocol for biology experiments, rock candy science project, how to measure heat of fusion of ice.

• Minnesota Science Teachers Education Project: Investigating Osmosis Using Water and Gummy Bears
• k20alt: The Gummy Bear Lab

About the Author

Based in northern Virginia, Rebecca Rogge has been writing since 2005. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Patrick Henry College and has experience in teaching, cleaning and home decor. Her articles reflect expertise in legal topics and a focus on education and home management.

Photo Credits

pxhidalgo/iStock/Getty Images

Find Your Next Great Science Fair Project! GO

STEM Little Explorers

Knowing through exploring.

Home » Articles » STEM » STEM Science » Gummy Bears Osmosis Experiment

Gummy Bears Osmosis Experiment

Today we will combine two fun activities from our childhood: eating gummy bears and learning about osmosis just kidding about osmosis being fun, back then it was a hard concept to grasp. but in today’s experiment, we will show you how to learn this important concept in a fun and easy way, article contents.

What is Osmosis?

Osmosis is defined as the movement of water molecules from a solution with a higher concentration of water molecules to a solution with a lower concentration of water molecules, through a cell’s semipermeable (partially permeable) membrane . What do we mean by the concentration of water? It’s the proportion of the water in a solution. Let’s talk about that next.

Solvent, Solute, and Solution

Speaking about Osmosis, you will probably often hear about solvent, solute, and solution. So let’s see what they are.

A solvent is any substance that dissolves other substances that we put in it. The most common solvent is water . We know that if we, for example, add sugar to the water, it will dissolve. This is important since, in our organism, water dissolves ions and proteins in our cells.

On the other hand, in our example above, the sugar would be a solute . The solute is a substance dissolved in another substance. So, sugar (solute) dissolves in water (solvent).

And the product we get is called a solution . Solutions can have different concentrations , depending on how much solute we dissolve in a solvent. If we add more sugar to the water, it will be sweeter and denser, more concentrated. However, this solution will now have a lower concentration of water molecules, since there are other things (sugar) in as well.

To summarise – when sugar (solute) dissolves in water (solvent) we get a mixture of water and sugar (solution) .

What is Semi-Permeable Membrane?

Think of the membrane as a wall with gaps (it’s semipermeable!). When solutions on both sides of the wall have the same concentration, nothing interesting happens – there is an equal probability water molecules will move from each side of the wall so in the end concentration will stay the same.

However, if we change the balance on one side of the wall, for example, add salt to one side – water molecules will now move from the place where there are more of them (ordinary water) to a place where there are fewer of them (salted water).

This state of different concentrations is also called osmotic pressure and therefore the amount of liquid will increase on the side with more salt, and decrease on the side where the salt concentration is lower until the osmotic pressure is equalized. The goal is to reach equilibrium, a state where concentrations are the same on both sides.

Here, we have 2 explanations of the process:

• The Mechanical explanation is that molecules of salt are blocking the movement of the water molecules so they are less likely to move from that side. 
• The Chemical explanation is that salt molecules consist of ions – Na+ and Cl-. Since water molecules are also partially charged they are attracted to salt molecules and therefore don’t move through the membrane.

Why Is Osmosis Important?

Osmosis is essential for the survival of all living organisms . It allows nutrients and minerals to move inside the cells, through the cell membrane, and also for waste to move out of the cells. For example, plants absorb water from the earth through the process of osmosis.

Try to remember the last time you ate something salty, such as chips. You must have been very thirsty afterward. This is because salt prevents water from passing into the cell through the semipermeable membrane and no matter how much you drink, it is difficult to quench your thirst.

Let’s go now and demonstrate the osmosis process in a simple way using gummy bear candies and different solutions.

Materials needed for the Gummy Bear Experiment

• Gummy bears (gummy candies) . You can buy gummy candy in any grocery shop. We have used Haribo gummy bears and they worked well for our experiment. It is not important which gummy candy you use, but we have got reports that some types/brands of gummy candy won’t work well and will just dissolve. Best to have at least 4 gummy bears to make easy comparisons of all experimental results and the original gummy bear.
• Water . 2 deciliters of water will be enough. We will add 1 deciliter to 2 of our glasses. 
• Salt . One tablespoon of salt will be enough to act as a solvent and create a concentrated solution.
• Vinegar . We will need 1 deciliter of vinegar to serve us as the second solution and we will add it to the last glass.
• 3 glasses . Since we will have 3 experimental groups, we will need 3 glasses. In the first glass, we will add pure water. In the second glass, we will add water and salt. And in the third glass, we will add vinegar.

Instructions for making Gummy Bear Osmosis Experiment

Check the video at the beginning of the article to see how to conduct this experiment. As mentioned in the required materials section, we used three types of solvent (water, salted water, and vinegar) but you can experiment with any type of solvent.

• Prepare 4 gummy bears (one for every type of solvent, +1 for comparison). Gummy bears are excellent for this experiment because they are made out of sugar, water, and gelatine. Gelatine doesn’t dissolve in water, but it allows water to pass through so it functions as a semipermeable membrane.
• Prepare your solvents. Put pure water in one glass, water with a big spoon of salt into the second glass, and vinegar into the third glass. 1 deciliter of liquid in each glass will be more than enough. You can also experiment with different mixtures, like oil, milk, or soda to see what will happen.
• Put 1 gummy bear into each solution . Leave one gummy bear on the side so you can compare afterward. Leave the gummy bears inside their solutions for a few hours. Check every 3 hours to see the changes.

Results of the osmosis experiment

• After 9 hours, we observed that the gummy bear left in pure water got much bigger than in the other solutions. The water went in! There is just a little bit of water in the gummy bear, so there was big osmotic pressure.
• Gummy bear in salted water got just a little bit bigger . Osmosis at work! Salted water had a lower concentration of water than the pure one, so in this situation, less water went into the gummy bear.
• In vinegar, the gummy bear got bigger , but it also started to fall apart, and that’s because of the acid in vinegar which can dissolve the gelatine.

What kind of solutions did you use and what are the results? Tell us all about your experiment in the comments!

What will you develop and learn?

• Knowledge from chemistry and biology . Osmosis, semipermeable membrane, solutions, etc., all play a big role in the functioning of living organisms. Talking about them will help us in better understanding what is happening on the cell level.
• What is osmosis and how does it work. Without osmosis, there would not be life. So understanding osmosis is important to understand biology.
• Scientific method and conducting experiments. Here, we conducted a scientific experiment with 3 experimental variables (water, salted water, vinegar) and a control variable (gummy bear that we didn’t put into any solution). This enabled us to control every aspect that could influence the outcome of the experiment.
• Learning by doing . We best learn through experience, and here, we conduct our own experiments. So new knowledge while having fun is guaranteed!

We hope you too were enjoying this experiment. If you are in the mood for more great activities, we have some to recommend.

• If you are interested in learning about defusion, a similar process to osmosis, then you can check How to demonstrate diffusion with hot and cold water article.
• We also recommend learning about oxidation and how oxygen reacts with electrons in the Apple oxidation experiment .
• If you are interested in making your own sweet candy, you can learn How to make homemade sugar crystals (Rock Candy) .
• And finally, if you are interested in learning about polarity, the chemical property of atoms, you can learn about it in a simple but fun Colorful milk polarity experiment .

Happy experimenting!

If you’re searching for some great STEM Activities for Kids and Child development tips, you’re in the right place! Check the Categories below to find the right activity for you.

STEM Science

Videos, guides and explanations about STEM Science in a step-by-step way with materials you probably already have at your home. Find new Science ideas.

STEM Technology

Videos, guides and explanations about STEM Technology in a step-by-step way with materials you probably already have at your home. Find new Technology ideas.

STEM Engineering

Videos, guides and explanations about STEM Engineering in a step-by-step way with materials you probably already have at your home. New Engineering ideas!

Videos, guides and explanations about STEM Math in a step-by-step way with materials you probably already have at your home. Find new Mathematics ideas.

Find out all about development psychology topics that you always wanted to know. Here are articles from child psychology and development psychology overall.

First year of Child’s Life

Following a Child’s development every month from its birth. Personal experiences and tips on how to cope with challenges that you will face in parenting.

5 thoughts on “ Gummy Bears Osmosis Experiment ”

• Pingback: 5 Amazing Balloon Experiments - STEM Little Explorers
• Pingback: How to Shrink a Bag with Microwaves? - STEM Little Explorers
• Pingback: How to Make Apple Oxidation Experiment | STEM Little Explorers
• Pingback: 100 Awesome Chemistry Experiments For All Ages -
• Pingback: Demonstrate Density with Orange Density Experiment | STEM Little Explorers

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Get Fresh news from STEM fields

I'm not interested in STEM