Chewing Gum Science Fair Projects For Middle School

Blowing the Biggest Bubble

Which brand of chewing gum – or better, bubble gum – lets you blow the biggest bubble? Do a science fair project to find out. Think about which brand would probably make the biggest bubble, based on the texture of the gum. Then have someone chew a piece of bubble gum and blow the biggest bubble that she can. Measure the diameter of the bubble as accurately as possible by holding up a ruler along its side. Repeat this several times with the same brand of bubble gum, and calculate the average size of the bubble. Then do the same thing with a few other brands of bubble gum, and compare the average sizes.

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor…

Every brand of chewing gum is advertised as having “long-lasting flavor.” Why not try it out and see which brand of chewing gum truly does last the longest? Choose three different brands of chewing gum, and offer them to your classmates one at a time. Tell your classmates to let you know when the chewing gum has no more flavor – the point at which they would normally spit it out. Time each classmate and make a table showing how long it took the flavor to run out of each piece of gum. You might want to give each piece of gum to each classmate on a different day, or the sweet taste that stays in their mouths after the first day might skew your results. Also consider changing the order that you give them the gum, so that you’ll know that the only factor you’re testing for is the type of gum.

Does Chewing Gum Help You Concentrate?

Some people say that chewing gum helps them concentrate on their work. Test out that hypothesis with this fun chewing gum science fair project. Make a list of ten pairs of unrelated words, such as “hat, chair,” “street, book,” and “table, tree.” Give a subject thirty seconds to study the words, and then test him by saying the first word and asking him to identify the second word. Then find a different subject and encourage her to complete the same test while chewing gum. Repeat the process numerous times with different subjects, and record how many word pairs each set of subjects got right.

This post is part of the series: Fun and Simple Science Projects

The simple science projects in this series are easy to do – and they’re fun too! They include chewing gum science projects, soda pop science projects, magnet science projects, and making a DNA model for part of a science project.