Experimenting with Peeps

We're getting in the holiday spirit around here and decided to have a little fun with Peeps. I personally hate the taste of them but of course my kids love them. I mean there almost pure sugar. We tried out two different experiments that we found online. One involved trying to figure out which liquid would dissolve the peeps best. The other was seeing how big we could grow the peep by heating up the marshmallow. I'll go into detail about each one below.

Experiment one: Dissolving Peeps

First up we tried dissolving peeps in 4 different liquids. I let my son choose the liquids that he wanted to test. He chose: apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, orange juice, and boiling water. He wrote down his predictions before poring the liquids in the containers.  He went with lemon juice for working the best. Next he filled them up and popped a peep in each one. We should have had level glasses but went with it anyways. After the peeps were settled in we could instantly see the one in the hot water changing and appeared to be getting smaller. We decided to let them sit for an hour and come back.

No, we didn't use any alcohol! Just wanted to use clear glasses 😄 

After an hour we came back and checked them. The one in the water was already half it's size. The one in the lemon juice looked like it was loosing its color a bit. We decided to let them sit overnight and see if there would be any more changes by morning.

Kaiden ran out first thing in the morning to check on his peeps. The one in water was almost completely gone. We pulled the others out of their mixtures and put them on a paper towel. We observed the changes. He wrote down what happened to each peep including their color and texture. It was pretty fun to see what happened to each one. Then he decided to eat the one that was in the orange juice 😷

Experiment 2: Grow Peep Grow

This was his favorite experiment. We first discussed how we could possible make him bigger. He thought that heat would be the best way to make the change. We decided to nuke him in the microwave and see if his size would change. First he measured the peep's size and noted how he looked. Next we put the peep in the microwave for about 20 seconds. He was amazed watching it grow while it was heating up. We pulled it out and marked the changes we saw. He had doubled in size and his coloring had changed. He also smelled quite gross from the sugar burning. It was fun comparing the peeps.

Do you guys have any more fun peep experiments? These were a hit at my house!