Why am I so disturbed by the screams of red gummy bears?

Science, you never cease to amaze me.  Will you ever stop being awesome?  I didn’t think so.  Trust me, I get it, I’m a north-eastern boy, I understand the whole dropping a lobster in a boiling pot of water.  I’ve seen it done many, many, times.  For some reason, though the sound of a red gummy bear screaming is surprisingly disturbing.  Also, I get that the candy isn’t actually screaming; lobsters don’t really scream either.  That would be… disturbing. 

If you thought I was just going to pull up that Robot Chicken clip of the red gummy bear stepping on the bear trap, you were only partially wrong.  Enjoy that.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk science.  First of all, we got this little thing called potassium chlorate.  If you’re a scientist, school teacher, pyro, or someone who actually printed the entire ‘Anarchist Cook Book’ as a child, you probably know what this is.  It is an oxidizer.  When you melt it down it loses its oxygen atoms and remains a salt with a chorine atom and a potassium atom.  If you added sugar, or say a gummy bear, @#$% gets real. 

Let’s just say the bear bears in a horrific fire of doom.  OF DOOM!  Not exactly sure what that looks or sounds like?  I didn’t either.  Enjoy.

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Historian, teacher, writer, gamer, cheat master, and tech guru: follow on Twitter @AndrewC_GZ