Sweet DIY gummy bear glue

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

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Con­duct the ex­per­i­ment un­der adult su­per­vi­sion only.

Equip­ment

• three packs of gum­my bears;
• glass bowl;
• wa­ter bath;
• two bricks;
• paint­brush.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

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 ce­ment­ed to­geth­er!

Process de­scrip­tion

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, sticky mass.

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

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

• Chem­i­cal – the for­ma­tion of var­i­ous chem­i­cal bonds be­tween sur­face atoms;

• Elec­tro­stat­ic – the in­ter­ac­tion of dif­fer­ent charges;

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