Gummy bears: experiment with cola

What you need:

• 1 liter of cola
• gummy bear
• a big glass

This turns the kitchen into a laboratory for experiments

• For the gummy bear experiment with cola you need the following things: 1 liter of original cola, a tall and wide glass and gummy bears, ideally the normal gold bears.
• The experiment can be carried out easily, even at home. You fill the glass 1/3 with cola. Then first take up to two gummy bears and place them in the glass.
• Now the exciting part follows. What is happening in the glass? How do cola and gummy bears react to each other?

Explain chemistry with gummy bears

• The result will raise a few questions among the participants. So you will probably ask yourself why there is foam formation.
• The answer is relatively simple. There is carbon dioxide in the cola. This is "foamed" when the carbon dioxide comes into contact with an object. In this case, gummy bears.
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• Since gummy bears only have a small friction surface, the foam formation is not as strong as, for example, when adding Mentos sweets. As a comparison, the experiment can also be carried out with them.
• You should leave the gummy bears in the cola and look at the glass again after a day or two. What happened? The gummy bears appear puffy and have increased in volume. This, too, will raise questions among the test participants.
• This is because gummy bears are made out of gelatin. Gelatine, in turn, consists of a long protein chain that is held together by hydrogen bonds. The water in the cola ensures that the water molecules in the cola settle into the protein chains and further hydrogen bonds form. The gummy bear increases in volume.