Purpose--The purpose of our lab is to answer the research question of how do different brands of sugar free spearmint gum go through change when it is heated? First, we must understand what gum is used for. One use is that it can be used to freshen up your breath. Also, a use for gum is to chew it when you have an upset stomach when Tums are not available. Another use is to use gum as an adhesive when nothing else is around. Gum’s melting point is about 125 degrees fahrenheit (mentalfloss.com). By knowing this we hypothesized that the gum would melt to a liquid. In our experiment we used spearmint sugar free gum of four different brands: Extra, Icebreaker, Trident, and Orbit. In order to answer this research question, we must first know the …show more content…
Each brand of gum also changed their smell and most changed color. The Trident gum’s smell changed from just mint to a burnt mint smell. This is because instead of the heat changing the state of the gum, it started to burn the gum. The gum was already minty, but then the burning added to the smell. For the Orbit and Extra gum, the heat intensified the smell. This can be compared to a candle. When a candle is lit on fire, the heat causes the wax to vaporize, which diffuses the smell (candles.org). This is similar to the gum because when the gum was heated, the scent of the gum was diffused and the scent went through the air. For the Icebreaker gum, no mint smell could be detected, it only smelled burnt. This is because the Icebreaker gum had to be heated for the longest time to melt completely. Again, since the gum did not change state, it caused the gum to be burned. Since the gum was on the heat for the longest time, it made the gum more burnt than any other. The gums had changed their color as well. The gum changed color because they were burned instead of changing state, as stated earlier. One type of gum was odd though. The Extra gum stayed the same …show more content…
One of the main ingredients to gum is rubber. There is a problem in the world with having too much rubber and not knowing what to do with it. The source of this rubber is old tires. There are many old tires that people do not know what to do with. It is very hard to dispose of these because tires will burn for 3-4 days. On many occasions a large pile of tires has accidentally started on fire. On one of these occasions the pile burned for nine months (http://webecoist.momtastic.com). In our lab, we saw that the gum had to be heated for a long time. This was just a small fraction of the amount of rubber in a tire. This shows that the tires are a real problem and the necessity for a new use. One new use for tires is to cut them up and use them in turf fields. The infill (the little black specks) of a turf field is made of rubber, and so are tires. They are the same material, so if we decided to use the tires for a purpose, that could be one. They would just need to be cut up into tiny pieces, then they can be used for all kinds of different turf