Happy Halloween! I’m a chemistry teacher who likes to trick her students into learning by doing fun stuff, or of course, giving them food. What is every teenager’s favorite food? After Takis, it’s candy. So in this post, I’m sharing all of ways of using food in a chemistry lab. This way you can have a decent list to go to the store with during this very “candy friendly” time of year.
Atomic Candies
In this lab, students are going to get five different treats and they will compare them to five different models of the atom. The treats are: Jawbreaker, Gum Ball, Marshmallow, Chocolate Chip Cookie and Blow Pop or Tootsie Pop (you need a candy in the middle). I don’t want to give the answers, but the idea is that the students will list the prominent features of each atomic model, and each candy. They write justifications as to why the Rutherford Model matches the candy they’ve chosen. There are certainly correct answers, but I like to give students the ability to justify their answers. As long as they sound good and well thought out, I don’t really care what the final answer is. You can read about this lab here.
Hydrate Bubble Gum
Grab a bunch of wrapped bubble gum for this one. Instead of doing a dehydration of a hydrated salt, students will chew bubble gum! The wrapper is like the crucible. The gum obviously would represent the hydrated salt. And the sugar in the gum would be like the water. “Cheaper” gum works best in this lab. You know – the kind that loses its sweet flavor in just a few minutes! I used this lab when I didn’t have a chemistry lab. It works just as well, doesn’t have a significant budget and teaches the exact same concepts! Read more about this lab here.
Average Atomic Mass
Read more about setting up an average atomic mass lab in this post. I like to have my students have three different types of candy for their isotopes. It’s fun and tricks them into doing a lot of math they don’t want to do. Plus, I don’t know of a high school that has a mass spec to do a true isotopes lab activity! Just make sure to use a food safe balance! You can do this with any candy, really. During the hybrid year, I did prewrapped chocolates (I had a very small class). Other years, students wouldn’t mind if I took some time to sort unwrapped candy. Anybody who was grossed out was allowed to throw out the candy! Read more about this lab here.
Freezing Point Depression
This one is a little different. For the ice cream lab, you’ll need milk, sugar, salt, vanilla extract, chocolate milk powder and ice. Not exactly Halloween. BUT if you can get some toppings, now is a great time for that! You can also look for Halloween themed Ziplock bags, bowls, spoons or table cloths. Buy them on sale and save them for later! Read more on this lab here. This is certainly a crowd favorite when it comes to using food in a chemistry lab.
Oreo Percent by Mass
If you have to deal with wrapped foods only, you can usually get snack size (or even single serve) oreos. In this lab the students have to develop a procedure for finding percent by mass of the cream in an Oreo. They then repeat for the Double Stuf. I’ve always just gotten the Family Packs and split them among my students while wearing gloves. That has worked too. But these are a good thing to look out for a good sale on!
Half Life of a Skittle
I only use skittles for this because I avoid the peanut factor in M&Ms. For this lab students have some skittles and shake the sample for a set amount of time. The skittles represent atoms of a radioactive element. The time shaken is the half life. After the half life the skittles are split out like dice. “S” up atoms have “decayed” and are STABLE. They are set aside. The rest go back into the students hands or cup to shake for another half life. Repeat until you can graph a nice decay curve. I’ve done this with a big giant bag of skittles that I just counted by weighing. But again, if you need wrapped stuff, you can have students add their “S up” and “S down” skittles together if you’re afraid the Fun Size packs are too small. Read more about this lab here.
Food in the chemistry lab is always a yes for me! (As long as we’re thoughtful about safety!!!!) I have a small set of food safe balances that we use for labs like this. We also use paper towels as a barrier! Every one of these labs is available in my chemistry lab book that you can find on TPT.
