Candy Lab: Post 3

      After conducting our lab I was able to make some conclusions about what I stated earlier in Candy Lab: Post 1. However, I also had some misunderstandings about crystallization. As far as my conclusions go, I am now able to better understand the processes of solubility and concentration having been able to observe it first hand. For solubility, after we poured the sugar into the mixture and stirred, you could see that the substance was hazy. As the substance got hotter, we saw the liquid become clearer. From this I was able to conclude that sugar does indeed dissolve better the longer it is exposed to a hotter temperature.  For concentration, the sugar was dissolved at 110 degrees so by the time the concoction got around 260 degrees we added 1 drop of each color, red and blue, to our boiling sugar. Since it was at a rolling boil the sugar almost instantly turned a pale purple. Then we added our flavoring after the boiling ceased and since it was maple it turned (the mixture) a somewhat nasty shade of brown. So we added a few more drops of red and blue to give the liquid candy a nice shade of dark purple. From this expiriment I concluded that if there are multiple colors in a mixture, they can cancel each other out and in order to get the color you want, there needs to be a much higher concentration of that color.  Now my misunderstanding was the candy crystallization. I didn't see any of that while the candy was boiling or while we were pouring it onto the wax paper. I went back and reviewed our recipe and it only mentioned crystallization once: you need to scrape excess sugar crystals off the sides of the can while the sugar was boiling. If you look at the photos I took of the cooking process (on the observations blog post) you will see there wasn't any visible crystalization on the sides of the can. I'm not saying crystallization wasn't part of this lab, I just wanted to mention that I didn't witness it first hand in this particular lab. 

      If I were to apply what I have learned and stated to another substance, I would choose to apply it to salt water, since salt has very similar characteristics to the finished hard candy product. I say this because I can apply all of my earlier statements about the hard candy and candy making process to salt and have the very same explanation for both. For example, concentration. If you just put a few grains of salt into, let's say a cup of water, you don't really taste it; but if you put a whole table spoon of salt in the same amount of water, the salty flavor becomes very over powering. This is just like my comparison of one drop of food dye vs. several drops of food dye; one drop only adds a tiny bit of color, but multiple drops make the color very vivid and noticeable. As for solubility, if you put a teaspoon of salt in a cup of room temperature water and only stir it, it takes quite a while to completely dissolve. If you put a teaspoon of salt in a cup of 110 degree (like our lab observations) water and stir, it only takes a few seconds to dissolve. On a larger scale, like with the candy making experiment, the sugar takes a while to dissolve in room temperature water but if you put it in hot water, the sugar takes less time to dissolve. Finally, I still believe that there is still a lack crystallization in both salt and sugar. When I think of crystals I think of snowflakes with feathery whispy ice particles extending outward. I never really witnessed any of that in any stage of the sugar or in salt. However, I do believe each individual grain of sugar and salt is a crystal, but at no point did sugar form another kind of crystal that I was able to witness. The same would go for salt, I think if you could put a bunch of salt in water, then let the water evaporate the salt crystals would look the same as they did before exposed to water. 

     If I was going to compare my results to another person's results I would go through a series of equations that look like this:

 2 cups sugar X 206g sugar/1 cup sugar 

                         = 412g sugar 

                   (How much sugar was used) 

3/4 cup water X 236 mL/1 cup X 1g/1 mL 

                         = 177g water

                    (How much water was used)

412g sugar/ 412g sugar + 177 H2O 

            = .699 ==>

                               69.9g sugar/ 100g  (Another way of finding the amount of sugar used)

412g sugar/ 177g H2O

    = 2.33g ==> 

                          233 g sugar/100g water  

In our lab, in 100g of water there is 233g sugar. In the example solubility curve, in 100g of water there was about 170g of sugar. As the temperature rose, the example sugar's dissolving rate increased from about 30g/ 20 degrees to about 50g/ 10 degrees. My data would suggest that the sugar in our expirament rose about 2.33g/ 10 degrees.