Dissolving Candy Hearts Experiment

One day after school, I challenged Aiden to design an experiment with candy hearts. He wanted to see what would happen when we added candy hearts to vinegar and thus was born our dissolving candy hearts experiment. Try it home with your kids and tell us your results.

Dissolving Candy Hearts Experiment

I set out a quick challenge for first grader Aiden on the table after school. I asked him to design an experiment with candy hearts. To get him started, I asked him what he wanted to test or what he wanted to find out about the candy hearts. He said he wanted to know what happened when we added them to vinegar.

Adding the candy hearts to vinegar would be a great science investigation. In order to make this an experiment, we had to change something and choose something to measure. I talked to him about the possibilities. He wanted to change the amount of vinegar in the cups. We needed to keep the amount of liquid constant so we combined the vinegar with water and used just water for the control. He wanted to see which candy heart would dissolve first. He thought the ones in vinegar would dissolve first.

We had three test groups:

• 4 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons vinegar and 2 tablespoons water
• 4 tablespoons vinegar

I suggested that we repeat the experiment. Aiden chose 3 trials for each. He poured the water and vinegar into the containers. We made sure the temperatures of the liquids were all the same. (They were at room temperature.)

He placed one candy heart in each of the containers. He kept the color of the candy hearts the same within a test group (all candy hears in vinegar were purple). However, he used 3 different colors of candy hearts total. Did this impact our results? We will have to repeat the experiment to find out.

7 hours later, the candy hearts were beginning to dissolve. Both test groups with vinegar showed obvious signs of dissolving. You could see little pieces of candy heart falling to the bottom of the container. The test group in water started changing color from purple to pink.

We looked at the candy hearts the next day and it didn’t look like much had changed. Aiden stirred the containers and the candy hearts fell apart into the liquid.

We checked on the experiment one more time later that day. Some of the candy remains in the water containers while very little is left in the vinegar containers.

This experiment is actually quite similar to one we did a few years ago. This dissolving candy hearts experiment compares how fast the candy hearts dissolve in different temperatures of water.

Let us know if you try one of our experiments. We’d love to hear about your results!

More Valentine’s Day Science Activities

• Check out all of our candy science ideas with valentine hearts.
• Give baking soda and vinegar a Valentine’s Day theme with this frozen vinegar hearts idea.
• Kids will love our 2 ingredient glitter slime for Valentine’s Day.

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