MadSci Network: Chemistry
Query:

Re: We are trying to find out how to make cotton candy from household items

Date: Tue Nov 23 20:27:53 1999
Posted By: Carol Crouse, , Food Technology, The Food Chain Ltd.
Area of science: Chemistry
ID: 942541389.Ch
Message:

Hi, Margaret.

You couldn't pick an easier product to make from an ingredient stand-point, 
since cotton candy is simply sugar with added food coloring.  But to 
jury-rig some common household items to make the cotton candy could present 
a problem.

The closest thing that I can think to a cotton candy machine, is a hot air 
corn popper.  It has the required heat and blower elements, but will not 
spin the heated, liquid sugar into a cooler environment, unless you were 
to be pulling it up and out of the popcorn chamber with the traditional 
paper cone.  But instead of sacrificing the corn popper by gumming it up 
with carmelized sugar (- or, burned sugar.  Be careful!), I would suggest 
that you check with a party rental store in your area which would probably 
have true cotton candy machines available.

The cotton candy machine has a heated chamber in which the sugar is placed. 
The sugar is heated to 185 degrees Celsius, by which time it has melted to 
form a syrup.  The chamber spins with the centrifugal force throwing the 
liquid sugar out through fine holes and into a surrounding tub.  As soon as 
the streams of liquid sugar hit the cooler, ambient temperature outside of 
the chamber, they cool and form the spider-web-like confection that we all 
love as children (- and adults, too!).  Then it is gently twirled up on a 
paper cone. 

With its unstable solid state, the cotton candy is very hygroscopic, 
readily picking up moisture from the air or in our mouths as we chew it.   
Cotton candy illustrates how the same material can be altered to, in this 
case, four distinct physical states.  The original sugar is crystalline, 
that melts to a liquid, that is manipulated into amorphous strands, that 
can be pressed into a pliable mass.

I hope your Cub Scout group sees the fun in the science of making cotton 
candy.  (I do strongly suggest that you rent a machine designed to make the 
cotton candy as it will properly contain the molten sugar and will have a 
thermostat to maintain the temperature in the desired range.)


Carol Crouse
Food Technologist
The Food Chain Ltd. 







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