The Bubble Gum Lab
Title: The Decrease of Mass in Different Brands of Gum
Purpose: To record the amount of mass that is dissolved when gum is chewed and to
determine which brand of gum loses the most mass.
Background: Bubble gum and chewing gum both taste great and are chewed millions
of times every day. Bubble gum has a high concentration of rubber for a better and
bigger bubble, unlike chewing gum designed to chew. In both chewing gum and bubble
gum it has three unheard of ingredients that are rare to put in food, rubber, plastic, and
wax are the three main ingredients in gum, making up the gum base. Rubber stands for
the purpose to give the gum elasticity, allowing it to stretch out and spring back in.
Plastic is in the gum so that it mixes with rubber to make easier to chew. The last
ingredient in the gum base is, wax it is mixed into the gum base so that it keeps the gum
hard inside the package, nice and fresh! Out of all the ingredients wax it the only
ingredient that dissolves and you digest, leaving the tasteless rubber and plastic mixed
together. After chewing the substances as in, sugar, part of the gum base, and the dye.
It dissolves in you saliva and you digest it. On the back of each gum package it lists the
ingredients in order from most to least by weight. Each gum brand is different in the
ratios of the gum base to sugar to flavor.
Materials: Triple bean balance, weighing paper, and the seven brands of gum.
Hypothesis: We predict that Double Bubble will lose the most mass during the lab
because in the ingredients 88.8% of the gum is sugar, and the rest is gum base, dye,
and flavor. Out of nine ingredients the first three are natural and alcohol sugars. The
fourth ingredient is gum base; and the last three ingredients are sugar, flavor, and dye.
Sugar, gum base, flavor and dye, are all dissolved and digested in saliva first, making
Double Bubble lose more and more mass.
Procedure:
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Receive gum from teacher
Mass the weighing paper
Open the gum and mass it for your Pre-chewing mass
Chew gum for exactly 5 min
Mass the gum again with the weighing paper for the after- chew mass
Subtract the mass of the weighing paper from the after-chew mass
Find the difference of the pre-chewing mass and the after-chewing mass, for
mass lost from gum
8. Use the formula % lost= difference * 100= percentage of mass lost from gum.
pre-chewing
9. Fill out personal data and group data table
10. Find the average of the mass lost in the group by adding each students
percent mass and dividing it by the total amount of people in group
11. As a class: fill out class data table of all 7 brands of gum and the average
mass lost of each
12. Make a bar graph out of the class data table
Analysis and Conclusion questions:
1. Out of the seven brands of gum, Double Bubble lost the most mass, and
Hubba Bubba Max lost the least amount of mass.
2. We converted the mass lost to percentage of mass lost, so
that_______________________________________________________
3. In gum the main ingredients that caused the gum to lose the most mass, is
sugar, gum base, flavor and dye. When you start to chew the ingredients
dissolve into your saliva, causing you to digest these ingredients after you
dissolve the sugar, gum base, flavor, and dye.
4. In the gum each ingredient stands for a purpose. The sugar in gum to make
the gum tasty and sweet. In the gum base, it’s made up of rubber, plastic, and
wax. The rubber is included so the gum has elasticity, making sure it can
stretch out and spring back in. Plastic is so that it can mix with the rubber to
make it easier to chew. The last ingredient in the gum base is wax,
incorporated into the gum base for a fresh piece of gum. Flavor and dye are
usually last on the list, to give the gum color and artificial flavoring.
5. In this experiment the main outliers are difference in chewing, braces, and
speed. We all chewed for five minutes, however how we chewed was all
different, causing more or less mass to lose in the gum. In our class, some
people had braces and some didn’t. Some of the ingredient could have gotten
stuck in the braces making it lose mass than non-brace students. The last
main outlier was speed of chewing. It’s just like the difference with students
chewing differently, some could have been chewing fast and some as slow as
possible, effecting the mass.
Conclusion: Our hypothesis was that Double Bubble would lose the most mass during
the lab for many reasons. It is mainly sugars, dye and flavorings which are all digested
and dissolved into your saliva first. Our hypothesis was supported. Double bubble lost
the most mass at 77.6% on average. Bazooka followed with a decrease of 63%.
Trident lost the third largest amount of mass at 62.9% then followed by Bubbalicious,
than Bubble Yum, than Orbit and lastly Hubba Bubba Max at the percentages of 56.8,
54, 51.6 and 16.6 respectively.