How Much Sugar Is in Bubble Gum?
"Illicit" classroom materials like bubble gum provide an enticing way to teach students the scientific method.Copyright National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Some of the flavoring in bubble gum is due to the sugar or other sweetener it contains. As gum is chewed, the sugar dissolves and is swallowed. After a piece of gum loses its sweetness, it can be left to dry at room temperature and then the difference between its initial (unchewed) mass and its chewed mass can be used to calculate the percentage of sugar in the gum. This demonstration experiment is used to generate new questions about gums and their ingredients, and students can then design and execute new experiments based on their own questions.
When students design experiments to test their hypotheses, they are acting like scientists and engineers who are researching and devising new creations, everything from new devices to new cleaning products. Scientists practice engineering whenever they design new experiments to test hypotheses. Chemical engineers design and test all sorts of products in laboratories, everything from bubble gum to cough syrup to medicines to shampoo.
After this lesson, 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 does.