butter
1 cup of sugar
food coloring
cookie sheet
heavy stainless steel or nonstick fry pan
wooden spoon
oven mitts
Professor (Adult)
- Butter the cookie sheet and place in the refrigerator.
- Ask the professor to help Pour the sugar into the frying pan. Place a few drops of
food coloring into the pan.
- Slowly heat the sugar until it melts -- this will seem like it takes forever but all good spells take time to brew. Keep stirring the sides of the pan to get all of the sugar melted.
- The sugar will mix into clumps and then slowly melt.
- Once the sugar is completely melted, with a Parent Wizard's help, pour the mixture onto the chilled cookie sheet.
- Let glass cool. Then carefully remove the glass from the cookie sheet. Eat and enjoy!
The Science Behind the Spell:
- Glass is made of sand, soda and lime, or to be more precise, silicon dioxide, sodium oxide and calcium oxide.
- Sugar is made up of crystals just like sand.
- When the sugar is heated, the sugar molecules break apart. The molecules reconnect as the sugar syrup cools forming a clear solid.
- Silicon dioxide, the main ingredient in sand, is one of the most abundant resources on earth.
- Glass can be made stronger than steel (think about the glass tanks at any major marine aquarium that holds thousands of gallons of water) or more delicate than paper.
- Did you know? The fake glass bottles and windows that the cowboys broke in western movies were made of sugar glass.
- Fiber optic cableis made of glass and carries far more information than the same size wire cable.
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