Comments on: Gummis. The Gummis were screaming.

By: Manu

Manu — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 02:21:19 +0000

Ya. Potassium Perchlorate will react with a gummi bear just fine if you melt the perchlorate before adding the bear. It also leaves a nice freshly toasted marshmallow scent in the air.

By: timone

timone — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 17:33:27 +0000

did this with a starburst…the whole test tube exploded into dust!

By: Excited

Excited — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:58:23 +0000

Yes! This means we can finally have gummi bear fueled cars!

By: anon

anon — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 20:17:15 +0000

LOL!! Ah, how nostalgic. Screaming Jelly babies~

By: baxter

baxter — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 02:41:31 +0000

get a fumehood bro.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:10:40 +0000

My high school chemistry teacher did this with a box of Red Hots. It was like he had lighted a flare under the fume hood.

By: AndyG

AndyG — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:04:28 +0000

Important facts:
1) No, no acid required.
2) Put all the compounds away *before* doing the reaction.
3) Obviously works much better with Jelly Babies because they’re British!
4) Never let the kids choose which colour to toast, things can get very dodgy!
5) The “commercial” British sugar-powered rocket works in a similar way but is a much much bigger firework with a propotionately bigger ‘oooooh’ factor.
6) Never do this experiment with more than one Jelly Baby … the rest are for eating when the kids are not looking

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:44:26 +0000

No fair! I can’t view the video from work!

Still, this reminds me of my chemistry teacher making expanded carbon, from (IIRC) sugar and conc. sulphuric. A brilliant reaction, and a great way to get kids interested in chemistry.

Then again, that same teacher demonstrated the thermite reaction in our classroom. Now that was fun. The globules of molten iron spat out by the reaction were small enough that they had cooled down by the time they landed.

This also reminds me of a lecture tour titled something like “Flashes, bangs and [something else explodey-sounding]“. I never got to attend one of these lectures myself, but apparently the prof soaked some cotton wool in liquid oxygen (according to Brainiac, the “miracle substance”!) and then lit it. It burned so fast that no-one saw the flame – the lecture hall was just suddenly filled with little bits of ash. Then, according to the story, this was once filmed using a high-speed camera so it could be viewed in slow-motion. When they viewed the footage, they saw that the flames actually reached all the way to the back of the lecture hall. After that, he stopped using that particular demonstration.

By: JB of Brisbane

JB of Brisbane — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 07:13:46 +0000

What we’re all forgetting here is – did anyone ask the Gummi Bear’s permission? Do you think he’d want to be fried to a crisp in a highly exothermic reaction? This is Gummi Bear Cruelty! I’m dobbing the St Alban’s science department in to PETA

By: I'd rather be fishin'

I'd rather be fishin' — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 04:36:23 +0000

I do this every year as an example of an oxidizing agent. Never use any acid, just melt the perchlorate compound. I learned after the 1st demo to always use an old test tube, they’re a real pain to clean out….