Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Sweetness?
Packaged gum such as the type shown here works well for this activity.Copyright Los Alamos National Laboratories
In the first part of the activity, each student chews a piece of gum until it loses its sweetness, and then leaves the gum to dry for several days before weighing it to determine the amount of mass lost. This mass corresponds to the amount of sugar in the gum, and can be compared to the amount stated on the package label. In the second part of the activity, students work in groups to design and conduct new experiments based on questions of their own choosing. These questions arise naturally from observations during the first experiment, and from students' own experiences with and knowledge of the many varieties of chewing and bubble gums available.
With bubble gum to capture their interest, students learn to design and conduct controlled experiments to answer their own questions about the amounts of sugar (or artificial sweetener) in bubble or chewing gum. When students design experiments to test their hypotheses, they are acting like scientists and engineers who continually research and devise new creations, everything from new devices to new cleaning products designed and tested in laboratories.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Describe why a control is important in a scientific experiment.
- Distinguish between variables and controls in a scientific experiment.
- Describe an experiment to determine whether sugarless gum loses as much mass after chewing as regular gum.