Monday, April 14, 2014

Mad Science Monday: Peep Experiment

    I am excited about this week's Mad Science Monday experiment. Last year, the kids and I microwaved Peeps and saw what happened.... it was lots of fun and hilarious to see the end product of the Peep! We couldn't wait to try another Peep experiment this year.
   This Peep experiment idea came from Bernadette over at Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas... again! I love her blog. She does so many  fun learning activities with her girls!
    For this experiment, we wanted to see what would happen to Peeps when we put them in different liquids. We used vinegar, water, soda and orange juice.
    The munchkin poured in 2/3 cup into a clear plastic cup. (A clear cup makes it easier to see what is happening to the Peep.)
    We placed one Peep in each cup and started to think about what would happen. 
    She used a fork and tried to push a Peep down into the liquids to see if it would sink and stay down (seems that she remembered the Sink & Float experiment from a few weeks ago)...but it didn't. Each peep floated on top of the liquid.
   After 3 hours, we checked them:
   (I had flipped them over after like 1.5 hours)
   In the water, the black eyes had come off and the water was turning yellow.
   In the soda, the peep was still yellow, but also starting to turn brown.
   In the vinegar, the peep looked like it was starting to lose its pink color.
   In the orange juice, the pink color seemed to be coming off as well.
  After 9 hours (this morning), we checked on the Peeps and here is what we saw:
    The peep in the water had turned completely white and the water was yellow. 
The black eyes and nose floated in the water too!
    The peep in the soda was completely brown and it looked like the acid in the soda was eating at the marshmallow. (Very easy to see how bad soda is for you!)
The nose and eyes were still there but not very visible.
    The peep in the orange juice was no longer pink and was completely white. 
Eyes and nose were still intact.
    The peep in the vinegar was also mostly white and the nose and eyes were still intact too.
    And then my son poked a skewer through each peep and it easily went right through it!
And then after another 4 hours, we took a peek at them again and didn't notice too much except that the peep in the vinegar lost its black mouth and it looked like the eyes were coming off too.
The little one was pretty disgusted when she saw how mushy they were and didn't want to touch them!
And she definitely did not like the way that the peep in the soda looked!
Afterwards we just talked about what happened to each one and possible reasons as to why it happened. We are going to leave them in there for a few more hours and then see what they look like then.
Now, we are thinking of other liquids to put the peeps into!
This was fun and it allowed both of my kids to make a prediction as to what would happen in each liquid. 
Try this fun Peep Experiment and let me know what liquids you choose to use and what happened!!

1 comment:

  1. thanks for sharing my blog and post Sara! I'm with your munchkin on the Peeps - more fun to play with than eat :) They definitely look gross after awhile.

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