Which Rock Candy Recipe Creates More Crystals, Tastes Better, and Looks Better? By: Jessica Fink

Recipe 1: http://www.ehow.com/how_3893_make-rock-candy.html Which recipe for rock candy creates more crystals, tastes better, and looks better? The two recipes I am using for my experiment take different amounts of time to create. Recipe 1 takes about 4 days to a week, and Recipe 2 takes about 45 minutes to create. Recipe 1: http://www.ehow.com/how_3893_make-rock-candy.html Recipe 2: http://www.nancyskitchen.com/Candy_Recipes/rock-candy-hard-candy.htm Purpose/Problem:

Research Homemade rock candy is commonly formed by allowing a supersaturated (solution that contains more of the dissolved material than could be dissolved by the solvent under normal circumstances) solution of sugar and water to crystallize onto a string or some other surface suitable for crystal nucleation (I’m using a wooden stick). Heating the water before adding the sugar allows more sugar to dissolve and thus produces larger crystals. Crystals form after several days. Food coloring can be added to the mixture to produce colored candy as well as flavoring. If you aren’t willing to wait a week for rock candy, there is an easier solution. Recipe 2 uses more sugar which allows faster crystallization. However, rock candy does need its time to form. Crystallization occurs because the water dissolved into the rock candy will evaporate over several days and leave behind most of the sugar which will stick to the bottom of the glass and the stick because it has nowhere else to go. This happens with Recipe 1.

My Hypothesis Using my research, I made my hypothesis that Recipe 1 will create more crystals quicker, and the crystals will look more store-bought. Also, I think that giving the crystals more time to form will give fuller and clearer crystals. I support my Hypothesis because Recipe 2 uses more sugar and is forced to crystallize quicker because the amount of sugar over-rules the amount of water in the solution.

Recipe 1 1. Sterilize tall jar/glass and stick by boiling in warm water for 2-3 minutes. 2. Tape the stick perpendicular to the pencil. Make sure stick doesn’t touch side or bottom of glass. Hang into tall glass and make sure the wood stick is about ½ - 1 inch above the bottom. 3. Heat water to a boil in saucepan. 4. Add sugar and dissolve in boiling water. 5. Add a few drops of food coloring. 6. Take pan off heat once sugar is thoroughly dissolved. Add 1 tsp. of your favorite extract (vanilla, orange, etc.). 7. Pour sugar syrup into glass and leave for 4 days to a week, or until crystals start to form. (The longer you leave it in the syrup, the bigger crystals will get.) To make sure no dust gets in your rock candy solution, put a paper towel over the top of the glass. Procedures: Materials needed: 1 cup water 2 cups sugar medium saucepan pencil wood stick food coloring 1 tsp extract tall glass tape

Recipe 1 (Slow-Forming) No build up of crystals yet. Crystals start to form on top of water, but not yet on the stick. Crystals start to build up on surface, and start on stick. Small layer of crystals on water; crystals on stick continue growing. Thick layer of crystals on water; stick built up with sugar crystals. Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

Recipe 2 (Quick) 2 1/2 c. sugar 1 c. water 1 1/2 c. white Karo syrup 1 tsp. oil flavoring 1 tsp. food coloring (your choice of colors) Combine first 3 ingredients together in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Cook to 300 degrees for hard crack. Remove from heat and add coloring and oil flavoring. Pour in cookie sheet sprinkled with powdered sugar. After it is hard, sprinkle more sugar on candy. Then break in pieces. (Oil flavorings are spearmint, cinnamon, anise, wintergreen, peppermint.) Independent Variable- the amount of time each took to make. Dependent Variable-water, vanilla extract, red food coloring. Control- Sugar.

Recipe 1 Recipe 2 Final Results (Analysis) Recipe 1 Recipe 2 This recipe made a very large amount of rock candy, and tasted decent, even though it was the quicker of the two. The rock candy did not make anywhere close to the amount of rock candy that Recipe 2 made.

Analysis Continued: When I recorded the results, I noticed a BIG difference in the amount of rock candy made in each recipe. Recipe 1 (slow) only created a small amount of rock candy on the stick, a small, useless layer of crystals on the top of the water, and a small mount of crystals in the bottom of the glass. Recipe 2 (fast) created a whole pan full of rock candy, as shown above. Also, I tried a small piece of each Recipe and they basically tasted the same. Looking at its Physical Properties, Recipe 1 looks more like something you would buy at a store, even though Recipe 2 looked a lot better physically. Basically, my hypothesis was somewhat correct due to the amount and taste of the different recipes. Lastly, if I were to do this experiment over, I would use a thinner stick and let the stick sit longer in the sugar syrup solution with Recipe 1.

Conclusion In this experiment, I used two different recipes to find out which one created more crystals, tasted better, and looked better. I noticed that the more sugar you put in a solution, the quicker it will crystallize, and same with boiling it because the water evaporates quicker. This is what happened with both recipes, but because I boiled Recipe 2 longer than Recipe 1, and I used more sugar, the candy formed quicker. I also noticed that the recipe also affects how the rock candy turned out. In recipe 2, I used white Karo syrup in the mixture. In addition, in Recipe 1, the final solution was in the texture of syrup also. This experiment is the reforming of the small specs in sugar that you buy from the store. You may also add coloring and different flavored extracts to make it taste like something besides just regular sugar. I think this experiment helped me to realize that rock candy is just a larger version of sugar, which is why most people enjoy it.

Resources/Research: http://www.ehow.com/how_3893_make-rock-candy.html http://www.nancyskitchen.com/Candy_Recipes/rock-candy-hard-candy.htm http://www.dewsworld.com/FRockCandy.html Resources/Research: