The Gum Experiment By: David L and Alejandro

Question: Will the mass or volume of a piece of gum change as you chew it?

Prediction: #1: The mass will stay the same because even if you chew it, it is still the same piece of gum. #2: The mass will increase because as you chew it you add saliva to it. #3: The volume will decrease because as you chew it you are condensing it into a smaller piece of gum.

Experiment: Before the gum gets chewed we will put it on a piece of wax paper that is on a scale, weigh it, measure, multiply the measurements to get the volume, chew the gum for two minutes, after we weigh it again, we put it in a graduated cylinder with water in it to get the volume, and we repeat the process 3 more times.

Data: 

Conclusion: I realised as I did this, only one of our predictions were correct! But, sometimes, our guesses will be incorrect. This was very fun to do. I now wonder, What if we chewed longer? What if we chewed two pieces of gum at the same time? What if we chewed faster?