WEBVTT - Are Pop Rocks Dangeorus?

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<v Speaker 1>slash brain Stuff. Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey,

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<v Speaker 1>I'm Christian Sager and this is brain Stuff. There's lots

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<v Speaker 1>of urban legends about pop rocks, candy like they supposedly

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<v Speaker 1>explode if you eat them with soda, and the kid

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<v Speaker 1>who played Mikey in those eighties Life Cereal commercials died

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<v Speaker 1>from combining the two. Have you ever heard those? Neither

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<v Speaker 1>of them are true. But here's one that was actually

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<v Speaker 1>reported in a nineteen seventy nine issue of Newsweek. A

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<v Speaker 1>shipment of pop rocks overheated in a delivery truck and

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<v Speaker 1>blew its doors open. If that's true, how did it happen,

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<v Speaker 1>And for that matter, how do pop rocks work? Anyway?

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<v Speaker 1>We know they are a candy that you put in

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<v Speaker 1>your mouth, triggering carbonation, a tiny burst, and a popping sound.

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<v Speaker 1>They were invented in nineteen fifty six by William A.

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<v Speaker 1>Mitchell when he was trying to create instant soda crystals

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<v Speaker 1>that melted in water. Mitchell was working for General Foods

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<v Speaker 1>at the time, but before that he worked in an

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<v Speaker 1>agricultural experiment station in Lincoln, Nebraska, where get this, he

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<v Speaker 1>blew his lab up and it left him with burns

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<v Speaker 1>all over most of his body. Yeah, it's true. Even

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<v Speaker 1>after that disaster, Mitchell still formulated a candy with potentially

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<v Speaker 1>volatile properties. Here's his basic recipe as it was refined

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<v Speaker 1>in nineteen eighty. All hard candies are made from a

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<v Speaker 1>combination of sugar, corn syrup, water, and flavoring. With Pop Rocks,

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<v Speaker 1>you heat these ingredients to dissolve the sugars and additives.

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<v Speaker 1>Then you boil the mixture, evaporating most of the water

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<v Speaker 1>at atmospheric pressure. What's left is a pure sugar syrup.

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<v Speaker 1>Here's where pop rocks unique recipe differs from other hard candies.

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<v Speaker 1>Before cooling, the sugar remixture is gasified and combined with

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<v Speaker 1>carbon dioxide at six hundred pounds per square inch. This

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<v Speaker 1>takes about two to six minutes and forms bubbles in

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<v Speaker 1>the candy. Lower temperatures make larger bubbles and produce a

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<v Speaker 1>better pop. When the pressure is released in the candy cools,

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<v Speaker 1>it shatters into pieces full of these trapped bubbles of gas.

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<v Speaker 1>When you put a piece of this candy in your mouth,

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<v Speaker 1>it melts and the gas escapes, causing the short popping sensation.

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<v Speaker 1>Those pops are the sound of six hundred p s

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<v Speaker 1>i worth of carbon dioxide being released from each bubble.

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<v Speaker 1>P s i is a unit of pressure where one

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<v Speaker 1>pound per square inch of force is exerted. Before pop

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<v Speaker 1>rocks leave the factory, they're examined by a testing panel

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<v Speaker 1>train to evaluate the popping sensation on a scale from

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<v Speaker 1>zero to fourteen. Zero represents no popping and fourteen represents

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<v Speaker 1>maximum popping. Anything lower than a seven is rejected as inadequate.

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<v Speaker 1>Ratings between seven and nine generate a satisfactory pop, while

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<v Speaker 1>anything between ten to twelve is considered outstanding because they

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<v Speaker 1>pop louder. But what about the delivery truck in nineteen

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<v Speaker 1>seventy nine where the doors blew open. Well, pop rocks

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<v Speaker 1>shouldn't be stored at over eighty five degrees fahrenheit or

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<v Speaker 1>they'll melt and pop in the package, So the combined

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<v Speaker 1>release of all that carbon dioxide is what opened the

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<v Speaker 1>truck's doors. All that stuff about soda explosions and Mikey

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<v Speaker 1>dying is just a myth, though, but that didn't stop

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<v Speaker 1>it from having a major effect on pop rocks reputation.

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<v Speaker 1>General Foods actually had to arrange a telephone hotline at

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<v Speaker 1>one point for anxious parents. They even sent Mitchell out

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<v Speaker 1>on a tour to debunk the rumors. There's all kinds

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<v Speaker 1>of variations on the ledgend. Check out the brainstuff channel

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<v Speaker 1>on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of

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<v Speaker 1>other topics, visit how stuff works dot com