Sweet Science

You may think of candy as simply something yummy to eat, but there is actually a lot of science behind these sweet treats.

Candies are sweet because they contain one or more kinds of sugar. To a chemist, the sugar you most commonly use is called sucrose, but there are many other sugars - glucose, fructose, ribose, maltose, and lactose, to name a few. You'll learn about some of these other types of sugar later this month.

While some candies are almost all sugar, most contain other ingredients, such as milk, flavorings, butter, or cocoa. You'll get recipes for several different candies, and will learn what makes them look and taste the way they do. And while it's usually a bad idea to eat experimental results, that rule doesn't apply to the experiments this month! You can enjoy all of them when you're done!