Marshmallow Madness

Marshmallow Madness

Marshmallows used to be made from the marsh mallow plant’s root and can be traced way back to—no, not China—Egypt!
Not too long ago—in the 1800s, well before your parents were born—the fluffy confection reached its perfect, modern form with sugar and gelatin.
By the way, this experiment is much more fun with Peeps—you know, those little, yellow marshmallow birdies. (Don’t worry, if we lose a few Peeps, plenty are born every day. At the Just Born candy factory in Pennsylvania, 3.8 million Peeps are hatched daily.) We, however, were “stuck” with regular, ol’ white, cylindrical marshmallows. (So we painted faces on them.)

Materials

• Marshmallows (or Peeps)
• Paper plates or paper towels (paper plates work better)
• Microwave oven
• Toothpicks
• Food colouring

Instructions

1. Dip the toothpick in food colouring and blot faces onto two marshmallows.
2. Put the marshmallows on the paper plate. (Or paper towel).

Marshmallow Instructions1

3. Put the marshmallows inside the microwave and close the door.
4. Cook for about 30 seconds on the “high” setting. (Microwave temperatures do vary, so you might have to experiment with this. We know one thing for sure: microwaving a marshmallow for more than two minutes is gross—it turns brown and it stinks.)

Marshmallow Instructions2

5. Stand back and watch. The marshmallows puff up and the faces stretch out.
6. When the microwave stops, take the marshmallows out and wait a few seconds. (The marshmallows will be very hot.)
7. Pull a marshmallow off the plate. You can mold it into a funny shape. Leave the other marshmallow. It will shrink.
8. You can eat the cooled, cooked marshmallows if you want, but they don’t taste that good.

What’s Happening

The water molecules in the marshmallow vibrate furiously when cooking in the microwave. This, of course, makes the water heat up, warming and softening the sugar. Heat from the water molecules also warms up the air bubbles, and they start moving faster. They expand and bounce off the “walls” of the marshmallow. Since the sugar walls are softened, these active, growing air molecules make the marshmallow puff up.
When the marshmallow cools, the air bubbles shrink and the sugar hardens. The magic is over. And so is the marshmallow.