JavaScript isn't enabled in your browser, so this file can't be opened. Enable and reload. After this lesson, students should be able to: MS-PS1-2. Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred. (Grades 6 - 8) Do you agree with this alignment? Thanks for your feedback! Alignment agreement: Thanks for your feedback! Alignment agreement: Thanks for your feedback! Alignment agreement: Thanks for your feedback! Alignment agreement: Thanks for your feedback!
(Note to teacher: In most school curricula, students are asked to learn a lot about science, but rarely given the opportunity to do science. While they may learn a lot of content, they are seldom asked to generate their own questions about phenomena they observe around them, much less conduct controlled experiments aimed at answering those questions. However, in order to understand what the process of science is (and is not), it is important for students to be given opportunities to do the work of scientists.) (Additionally, students are also rarely given the opportunity to chew gum in the classroom. However, the combination of hands-on activity and junk food is nearly irresistible to middle school students. Bubble gum, which is considered an illicit item in most schools, is an especially attractive material that can be used to teach the scientific method within the classroom.) (Introduce the lesson by asking the class a few questions.) How long does the flavor last in your chewing gum? Have you ever wonder why gum loses its sweetness so quickly? Why is that? Does it seem like the gum gets smaller after you chew it? (Listen to a few ideas from students.) I would like you to do an experiment to test a hypothesis I have. This is my hypothesis: Sugar contributes to gum's flavor, and during chewing, the sugar is lost, which makes the gum get smaller as it loses its sweetness. I will provide you with bubble gum and you will conduct the experiment. Are you ready? (Proceed to conduct the experiment, as described in the first part of the associated activity, Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor?) A quick read of the nutrition label on a typical pack of bubble gum shows that one piece has a mass of about 8 grams, and of that mass, about 6 grams is sugar. Sugar dissolves readily in water, and about equally well in saliva. Some of the flavor in gum is due to the sugar, which dissolves in saliva and is swallowed, never to be tasted again. Also, the size of a wad of gum decreases considerably in the first 10 or 15 minutes of chewing. This change in volume is due to that same loss of sugar. In the case of sugarless gum, the sweetener is typically a synthetic compound known as sorbitol, which may be listed as "sugar alcohol" on the nutrition label. It occurs in about the same proportion as sugar in regular gum, and it also dissolves in saliva, reducing both volume and sweetness, just as the sugar in regular gum does. Realize that although technically sweetness is considered a "flavor" quality, almost all of the taste of foods (including gum) comes from their smells and hence, aromas. In fact, "80-90% of what we call flavor is olfactory, or smell-based." (Mary Roach, Gulp) Two pieces of gum, each with the same amount of sugar can taste dramatically different because of their different aromas. If your nose is congested so you cannot smell, you can observe sweet, salt, bitter, etc., tastes, but no aromas and hence, little real flavor. Challenge students to consider whether sugar and flavor are the same thing and what it is they are actually measuring in the associated activity experiment.
After students have completed their experiments (in the associated activity), have them analyze their data by determining the amounts of mass lost from their gum and determining the percent of mass lost. Help them understand the percent of mass lost is the more important number, since the initial weights of the gum may not have been identical. Thus, if a larger piece of gum lost more mass than a smaller one, both may have had the same proportion of sugar all along. Only by calculating the percent of mass lost can we determine the relative proportions of sugar in different types of gum. Next, have students prepare graphs of their results. Weights of gum before and after chewing can be shown in a bar graph, and the percentages of sugar in different types of gum can also be compared in bar graphs. If students conducted an experiment to see how the mass changes depending on how long the gum is chewed, they can show their results in an x-y scatter plot, with mass (the dependent variable, since it depends on how long the gum was chewed) on the y-axis and time (the independent variable) on the x-axis. Then have each group share its findings with the rest of the class. A good way to do this is for each group to prepare a poster. Scientists and engineers frequently use posters as an efficient and timely means of communicating with each other when they get together at meetings devoted to a particular topic. Their posters contain the same types of information that would be covered in a formal paper published in a scientific journal:
Give students a day or two of class time to prepare a "semi-formal" poster to display in the classroom. Expect the posters to be formal in the sense that they give sufficient and objective reportings of the experiments, are neat, and use correct grammar and spelling. However, encourage students to express their creativity in the way they lay out and embellish their posters with color, graphics, font sizes, illustrations, etc., so they are successful in communicating to readers. Because good poster preparation requires many components, all students have opportunities to contribute in ways that highlight their own particular strengths. When posters are done, have group present them to the rest of the class along with brief summaries of the results and conclusions. Encourage other students to ask questions and give feedback to the presenting group. Poster Presentations: Have teams graph and analyze their experimental data, and present their results and conclusions in poster format to share with the rest of the class, as described in the Lesson Closure section. Review their posters to gauge their comprehension of the subject matter and concepts. Written Wrap-Up: As a concluding assignment, ask students to write answers to the following questions:
Assign students to conduct Internet or library research to discover some interesting history and facts about chewing gum, including how it is made by chemical engineers. For example, did you know that it is impossible to make chocolate gum? Use this lesson as part of a unit on chemistry; it makes a good way to introduce the biochemically important sugars. This content was developed by the MUSIC (Math Understanding through Science Integrated with Curriculum) Program in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University under National Science Foundation GK-12 grant no. DGE 0338262. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policies of the NSF, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government. This lesson and its associated activity were originally published, in slightly modified form, by Duke University's Center for Inquiry Based Learning (CIBL). Please visit http://www.ciblearning.org/ for information about CIBL and other resources for K-12 science and math teachers. The basic idea and method of this lesson and activity, although much modified here, originated in an article by high school teacher Louis Gotlib that was published in a newsletter of the North Carolina Science Teachers Association. "Finding the Percentage of Sugar in Gum" first appeared in NCSTA Teaching Notes #5, 1997. Last modified: June 19, 2020 |
How to find the mass of sugar in gum
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