Chewing gum: Flexible or Not?
Chewing gum is made out of chemicals that are polymers. Polymers are large molecules that are groups of smaller molecules hooked together in long chains. Most plastics and rubber are polymers. Try this experiment to see what difference temperature can make to polymers and their flexibility.
You will need:
two sticks of chewing gum a freezer
Remove the sticks of gum from their wrappers. Put one in the freezer and leave one in the room for about twenty minutes.
Take the gum out of the freezer and try to bend it. What happens? Try to bend the gum that is at room temperature.
The molecules in the gum are usually flexible and slip easily past one another when the gum is bent. But at cold temperatures, the polymer loses its flexibility and becomes hard and brittle. The cold gum will not bend, but break.
Let the pieces of cold gum warm up and try bending them. Is there a difference? The flexibility of the gum returns as the temperature warms up.
If you would like to more experimenting, try this on different brands of gum. Do you see differences in how different brands react to the cold?
http://www.wrigley.com/gum/story.htm
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