Sweet DIY gummy bear glue (2024)

Just how mighty can gum­my bears be? Can they glue bricks to­geth­er? Check this video for thean­swer!

Safe­typre­cau­tions

Con­duct the ex­per­i­ment un­der adult su­per­vi­siononly.

Equip­ment

• three packs of gum­mybears;
• glassbowl;
• wa­terbath;
• twobricks;
• paint­brush.

Step-by-stepin­struc­tions

Emp­ty three packs of gum­my bears into a glass bowl and melt them in a wa­ter bath. When they turn into a thick, vis­cous mass, use a paint­brush to ap­ply this mass to a brick. Press with a sec­ond brick and wait 2 min­utes for the “glue” to hard­en. The bricks are ce­ment­edto­geth­er!

Processde­scrip­tion

Gum­my bears con­tain gelatin, an ad­di­tive de­rived from an an­i­mal pro­tein known as col­la­gen. It is used as a thick­en­er or gelling agent in foods, medicines, and cos­met­ics. When in­tro­duced to wa­ter, gelatin gran­ules swell and in­crease in vol­ume. If the swollen gelatin is heat­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50°C, it will melt to form ei­ther a liq­uid or a vis­cous mass de­pend­ing on con­cen­tra­tion. Gelatin is ca­pa­ble of act­ing as an ad­he­sive. More­over, gum­my bears con­tain glu­cose syrup (usu­al­ly up to 43% glu­cose), which con­trib­utes to their ad­he­sive prop­er­ties. When heat­ed, the gum­my bears form a vis­cous, stickymass.

The in­ter­ac­tions be­tween an ad­he­sive and the sur­faces it con­nects vary in ac­cor­dance with theirstruc­tures:

• van der Waals – in­ter­molec­u­lar forces aris­ing due to in­ter­ac­tions be­tween the mol­e­cules’ dipole mo­ments and po­lar­iza­tion of the elec­tron shells;

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• Chem­i­cal – the for­ma­tion of var­i­ous chem­i­cal bonds be­tween sur­faceatoms;

• Elec­tro­stat­ic – the in­ter­ac­tion of dif­fer­entcharges;

• Dif­fuse – mu­tu­al per­me­ation of the ad­he­sive and the sur­face into eachoth­er.