A Gummy Bear Dies With Style

Published on Friday, September 24, 2010, by James Norton / Edit Post

Via the always entertaining Laughing Squid: A red gummy bear is dropped into a test tube of potassium chlorate. What's the critically important thing to understand about this?

"Molten potassium chlorate is a strong oxidizing agent that reacts violently with sugar. Gummy bears have lots of sugar in them."

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POST A COMMENT |5 Comments

COMMENT

  • That same agent is a cheap way to make oxygen gas. Of course, it is kinda violent if things go wrong. The MIR Space Station was almost lost to a fire caused by KClO3.

  • If only they had darkened the room while taping that!

  • Easy to see here how sugar = energy. And if that energy isn't used, but stored, it = a fat body!

  • Oh lord, my high school chemistry teacher tried to do this once, but she didn't have any gummy bears on hand. I offered a cough drop, and the bloody thing shot across the room on fire and landed on a cardboard box, igniting it. It was amazing.

  • could we power engines with gummy bears?