MadSci Network: Chemistry |
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.
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Chemistry.