Turning Cotton Balls into
Cotton Candy
By Daniel Cruz
ENGL- 21007
Abstract
The hypothesis is that it’s possible to make cotton candy from cotton balls. Cotton balls are made
up of cellulose and cellulose is made up of glucose which is sugar. Nile adds the cotton balls into
sulfuric acid which separates cellulose into smaller parts then breaks them down into glucose.
Through a few trials Nile gets the sugar to crystallize which then allows him to make the cotton
candy. Nile faced a few problems along the way, but he improvised and thought of solutions.
The results were not as expected but the goal was accomplished.
Introduction
Cotton balls are made up of a material called cellulose and cellulose is a chain of glucose
molecules. Knowing that cotton is technically all sugar it should be possible to break down the
cotton balls to make candy, in this case cotton candy. This experiment was a long dream of
Nile’s which to him sounded ridiculous, but he knew it was possible and it took him a long time
to plan it out. To make it a bit more challenging Nile didn’t want to use specialized equipment
and complex chemicals to make the experiment simple to do.
Materials and Methods
The 2 main ingredients he uses in this experiment is the cotton balls(77g) and sulfuric
acid(230g). He begins this experiment by diluting the acid with ice, he doesn’t explain why but
my guess is that the acid might be too concentrated and would possibly burn all the cotton balls.
He then begins to put the cotton into the acid one handful at a time. The cotton begins to dissolve
in the acid, but some cotton remains, so he puts the container in a hot water(50c) bath to help
dissolve the cotton. He then proceeds to dilute the solution even more by adding it to 456mL of
boiling hot water which was an important step to begin breaking down the cellulose into glucose.
Then he cooled down the solution by surrounding the container with ice. While the solution
cools down, he begins to prepare another mixture needed which is calcium carbonate(chalk). He
mixes the chalk(245g) with 125mL of water. Once cooled he slowly added the chalk mixture into
the cotton solution. After mixing it he now needed to filter out all the sugar water out of it.
The sugar water was full of impurities, side products and acid so he needed to filter it out
again. To filter the water, he used a chemical often used to filter aquarium water called resin. He
put the resin in a tube which would allow the solution to run through while pulling out all the
acid and side products. He did this process twice making the solution purer and a lighter color.
He then removed a lot of water in the solution by putting it in a dehydrator for about 35 hours.
He ran it again through the filter because he noticed the solution still smelled strange and slightly
acidic. During the filter process it got rid of the smell and acidity, but he ended up needing to add
water, so he had to remove it again. And now he waited for it to crystallize.
Results
It did not crystallize instead it had become gooey which had the texture of melted sugar, so this
meant he was on the right track. He then thought of a solution to fix it by putting it on a hot pan
to completely boil all remaining water and to caramelize the sugar. The sugar finally crystallized
which meant it was time to put it in the cotton candy machine. It failed; the sugar he made had a
melting point too low, so it had trouble cooling in the machine giving it its stringy texture. And
once again he came up with another solution of caramelizing the sugar to increase its melting
point. Finally, success, the cotton candy he made turned out to be thicker than the regular kind,
came out brownish and tasted good yet slightly burned.
Discussion
In this experiment we saw that some steps didn’t go as planned therefore needing to come up
with solutions to fix it. Although it doesn’t seem like a very complicated experiment it did take
quite a lot of time to conduct. The results were not as expected but he did the best with what he
had and made his dream of making cotton candy from cotton balls a reality.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we saw that it is possible to make cotton candy from the glucose molecules in
cotton balls. Although Nile had a plan, we saw that it didn’t go exactly as planned so he had to
improvise and think of solutions to make this experiment succeed. Also, while having limitations
of no fancy equipment or chemicals and just using items anyone can get.
References
https://youtu.be/vHuFizITMdA?si=Hzn5sCPTBepTGIoA