POCKET CLASS: Calories and combustion (blowing up a gummy bear)

When you consume food – say, a gummy bear – your body takes that energy and releases it slowly, transforming it into thermal, mechanical or stored energy. 

But what if all the sugar energy in that same gummy bear were to be release all at once?

In this week’s Pocket Class, Dr. Mickie Noble answers that question with the help of a gummy bear — and a fiery experiment

“We always talk about the number of calories in our food. Well calories are a unit of heat, right?” says Noble, program head of the Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Undergraduate Certificate in Applied Environmental Sciences.

“So if I release it all at once instead of capturing it and bleeding it off in a form that we can use in the body, you get lots of light and lots of heat and lots of smoke. It’s a fascinating example of what happens when we don’t control that reaction.”

 

 

 

 

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Want to keep learning with Dr. Noble? Find out why she says wrong answers are A-OK in her classroom in her Pocket Class on embracing failure.