M&M's Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Last Saturday we went to the Roper Mountain Science Center for their monthly family event. This month they featured science project ideas that focused on chemistry and candy. Needless to say JDaniel had a blast! Candy and chemical reactions are two things kids really enjoy.

One of the science project ideas really stood out! We were all fascinated by the results. The activity focused on what part of an M&M will sink and float. Wait! Did I just say what part of an M&M will float and sink? Yes, I did. When you place M&M’s in warm water, part of each of the M&M’s will sink and part of them will float.

You may have guessed that the color will float off of the M&M’s. If you did, you would be right. After placing M&M’s in warm water, the colors did float off. Some of the color floated right to the bottom of the cup and some co-mingled with the water. The M&M’s floated to the bottom of the cup too.

With their color removed, the M&M’s has a white shell. We thought they looked a little odd without their color coats.

Part of each of the M&Ms did float. The edible M’s floated to the top of the cup. They apparently are very light. They are also very flat. That seemed to aid them in their floating. We decided that the M’s looked really odd separated from their candy.

One of the scientist helping with the experiment told us that this same experiment could be done with Skittles. If you use them, you will have S’s floating at the top instead.

As I mentioned this was our favorite of the science project ideas shared. I bet you will want to try it at home or in your classroom. If you do it around a holiday time, you will want to look for holiday themed Skittles or M&M’s.

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Here are some holiday M&M’s:

M&M’s Milk Chocolate Candies for The Holidays

M&M Solid Milk Chocolate Valentines Day Candy

This would also be one of those science project ideas that would be great to use as a science fair project. Kids could try the experiment with different types of M&Ms or different types of liquid to see if results would be that the M’s floated to the top of the liquid.