Swimming Gummy Gecko

Here's another fun gummi gecko trick. After it sits in water for two days, it's flexible enough to go swimming!

Gummy Gecko Tails

One gecko went for a swim, and the other stayed dry. One gecko floated in water, showing off hidden air bubbles, and the other gecko kept its secrets. One gecko absorbed so much water it grew, and the other lay by the side of the pool. One gecko swam away (down the drain) and the other was forgotten in a bowl.

One gecko, sitting in a bowl for weeks, got its tail bent out of shape!

(For a few minutes, the tail stuck up at nearly a 45 degree angle. Sadly, after we placed it on a plate, gravity eventually took its course, and our gecko became flat once again.)

Can You Eat Giant Gummies? and a book giveaway!

After I wrote a guest blog post about giant gummies for Lisa Bergantz of smmartideas.blogspot.com, she decided to do it on TV. When she demonstrated the gummy experiment on Good Things Utah, she mentioned that she'd dared her kids to taste them, and they tasted awful, because the flavor is so diluted. (You can watch the clip here--the gummy section starts about 2 minutes from the end.)

I started thinking about that. She's certainly right, that the flavor is diluted by all the water the gummies have absorbed. But is there something else going on?

Here is my test gummy worm, which has absorbed so much water and grown so enormous that it no longer fit in the drinking glass, and broke in pieces:

Can you see the cloudy water at the bottom of the cup? Something's been dissolving, and it's probably not the gelatin (which has absorbed all the water that made the gummy grow, and is still holding the gummy together.) I stuck a straw in to find out. Sure enough, the water was sweet and a little candy flavored, kind of like a weak Koolaid. So, not only has the flavor of the gummy been diluted by all the extra water, it's also been diluted because some of the sugar and flavor has dissolved into the water.

(I definitely do not recommend eating the gummies, which are more like weak-flavored Jell-O, or drinking the water. This was done for the sake of science!)

Lisa is also holding a Candy Experiments book giveaway at her blog, smmartideas.blogspot.com. Find out how to enter here!