The M&M Experiment

Another exciting Super Science Wednesday!  Today we posed the following "I wonder":

I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF WE PUT M&Ms IN WATER.

We made a list of the MATERIALS we would need for this experiment: bowl, water, M&Ms

Then we discussed our PREDICTIONS about what would happen and Mrs. Ducharme recorded them on a chart paper.  We had a variety of answers such as the M&Ms would melt, the M&Ms would disappear, the color red would come off and so on.

Then came the best part.  We worked in small groups of 2 or 3 and had to OBSERVE what happened.  An important part of this experiment was to put the M&Ms in the water with the letter M facing up.  We put 4 or 5 M&Ms in each bowl with a small amount of water.  Then we waited!  We also had to be sure not to bump or shake the bowl, as that might AFFECT the results of our experiment.

It was hard to capture in photographs, but we tried.  We discovered with much excitement that the color comes of the M&Ms and the M&Ms turn white and brown.  Another word we could use when describing this is DISSOLVE.  The water was described by the kids as looking like a "rainbow".   The most exciting part came next…the letter M on the M&M came off the top of the M&M and floated to the top of the water!  You can imagine the excitement when the children discovered this.  This is a great experiment to try at home.  

We then got busy RECORDING the RESULTS of our experiment so we could put it in our Super Science Journal.