M&M Science experiment

I came across this experiment by navigating randomly some online content. There seemed to be a lot of mystery around the way m&m-s were reacting to the water. First, when the colors melt, they do not mix but rather stay in a clearly divided area. Secondly, the white m-letter printed on them does not melt! What is it made of that it will not melt with water? We wanted to find out ourselves, so we set up a little play experiment to find out more.

You Will Need:

16 m&m-s
4 small plates
water
oxygenated water

Procedure:

Label each plate with the type of water that you are going to pour in it: Hot, Warm, Cold and Oxygenated. Place 4 m&m-s in each plate.  If you are using a large plate, you can also group several m&m-s of 1 color to create 4 or more groups of different colors (i.e. Create groups of 4 red, 4 yellow, 4 blue and 4 green placed with some distance within each other.) Pour hot, warm, cold and oxygenated water in the related plates. Try to pour it in the center of the plate and slowly.
Now you can observe what happens:

Observations:

1. Which type of water melts the colors first? Which one melts them more slowly?
2. How long it takes to melt the colors?
3. What happens to the colors? Do they mix?
4. How long it takes before they start mixing?
5. Has the m on each candy melted?
6. What type of liquid cannot melt the m?
7. How long you must wait so that all the m-s melt?

Conclusion:

The clearly separated areas of colors do not last very long. The colors start mixing after some time. The warmer the water is, the quicker this process is. Why the colors do not mix straight away may due to the water stratification caused by the carnauba wax. This wax it is generally used as a glazing agent and it is coated on the candies because it makes them shiny. The m&m's that we used were bought in the cinema and came with no labels on the package, so we cannot not confirm that they had it, however carnauba wax it is listed amongst m&m ingredients on other packages (see Tesco). This wax is also placed on top of apples (increase shelf life) and it is used in shoe polishes, furniture polish, automobile wax, coating of dental floss, pills and in many cosmetic products. In low doses this substance it  is considered to be safe. And short term studies have found no particular consequences due to it's consumption.

The white m printed on the candies melts with warm water, so, whatever it is the shell made of, it reacts to hot temperatures. The cold water did not melt it (at least for the amount of time that we waited).

You can watch us do this experiment in this video:

 

We would love to know if you could replicate this at home? Did it work? What was your child more curious about?