Eating your science project...or how to dupe, Papa!

The other day, I had a visit from my sweet grandniece.  She was in the midst of doing a science project for school and needed someone to take pictures of her experiment.  This was not due to my expert photography skills but rather that it has become sort of a tradition.  I have been doing this since she started school and well, she and I now think it is quite the thing to do.  She always brings her project and shows me just what she is doing.  I take pictures.  (My job is difficult, I must admit! Ha!)  Anyway, like I said, she toted her project down and set it up in my kitchen.  She and her Papa (my brother) had been working on this for weeks now!

From what I gather, she was trying to decide if the popular candy M&M's actually do "melt in your mouth and not in your hand" or something on that order.  She had two white bowls that held warmed water (right at body temperature) and a plastic container of the candies.  One candy was placed in each bowl to see how long it would take to melt verses how long it would take to melt in your hand.  To be honest, she and I were more interested to see that the little, white letter "M" would eventually float to the top of the water!  It seems this "M" is made of some sort of edible paper stuff...who knew?  But back to the project..sure enough, the water started turning colors as the hard candy shell dissolved into the water.  After a bit, she showed me that the chocolate center did not dissolve..it just sat there in one mushy lump!  She even poked at it with a wooden skewer and it still did not dissolve!  This made me ponder just what was in this stuff!  Non-dissolving "chocolate" does not sound appetizing to me!

The whole time we were waiting for the candy/water concoction to do its thing, Macie was munching on the candies remaining in the container!  Aha!  It suddenly dawned on me just why this was chosen as a science project!  She loves to eat M&M's!  What a smart girl this is!  Perhaps, though, the project should be changed to "How to dupe Papa into buying me candy!" Papa kept buying her M&M's to use in her project for the past several weeks!  As far as I could see, those M&M's never stood a chance of melting in her hands!  She popped them in her mouth far too fast!  Grandnieces, Science Projects and M&M's...sounds like a winning combination to me!