Chewing gum

[Julia]

Hello everyone

I need help please regarding the affects HCL has on chewing gum.
Apart from visualling seeing what happens, what other test can be carried out? I thought maybe weighing it before and after but I'm not sure.

Thanks
Julz

[Robb]

Hi Julia,

Although this is a late post I have for you some test involving HCl on chewing Gum.

The reason for the reply is because I have just found it in one of the forums in the category of Chemistry - Labware and General.

You could look at the possible effect of the HCl on how:

1. Brittle the gum can become;
2. Discolouration,
3. Odour characterstics before and after HCl interaction;
4. You could even stir the gum in a magnetic stirrer for an hour or two (two would be better) to leach out any sugars present and evaporate the liquid to discover how much sugar was present.
5. Again leach ot the acidified food stuffs from the gum be stirring the gum in distilled water and titrating the acid that may be used as a food additive using 0.5M NaOH solution.

These tests should keep you busy for a while.

Cheers,

Robb..

[Julia]

Thanks Robb,

I will pass on these ideas to the teachers.
I found another great experiment regarding foods and digestions,
and that is to find out how much fortified iron is in cereals.
Place the cereal into a beaker and add water and using a white magnetic stirrer after a few minutes or so you can see the iron cling to the stirrer. It works in all iron fortified foods even Milo.

But we also found that the students who had eaten cereal (or milo) that morning, had a higher current when we checked with a multimeter. It lead to all sort of discussions among the student and really makes you wonder what we are eating.

Julz