Popcorn and Milk Experiment {From Farmer Boy}

We have been continuing our literature studies of the Little House series and are currently reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In the third chapter of this book we read about Almanzo and how he loves popcorn and milk. It looked fun, so of course, we had to give this popcorn and milk experiment a go.

The book says: 

You can fill a glass full to the brim with milk, and fill another glass of the same size brim full of popcorn, and then you can put all the popcorn kernel by kernel into the milk, and the milk will not run over. You cannot do this with bread. Popcorn and milk are the only two things that will go into the same place.

So we tried it. We got out two glasses that were exactly the same and filled one with milk and one with popcorn. The boys slowly placed the popcorn into the milk and guess what?

It worked. The popcorn all went into the milk and the milk did not spill, though it did make a sizzle type noise. Now apparently some people like to eat this. It has been quite a popular breakfast for many people, so both of our boys got a spoon and gave it ago but, it was not for them. They didn’t like it at all.

After we did this, we decided to try to see if this worked with other liquids. The next liquid we tried was water. We did exactly the same, filling one cup with water and one with popcorn and then slowly placed the popcorn into the water.

And it worked the same as the milk. The boys didn’t taste this one (or any of the others) as they didn’t like the one with the milk, so they figured they would all taste horrible.

Next, we found some gatorade in the fridge so we decided to try that.

It did work, but I forgot to get a photo of that one, so you will have to believe me. Or, you could try it yourself!

And, lastly, we tried lemonade.

And, of course, it also worked.

We had run out of liquids to try, but we still had some popcorn left over, so we filled the popcorn cup up again and slowly placed all the popcorn into the cup with lemonade that already had 1 cup of popcorn in it to see what would happen.

Wow! It worked. Yes, this glass (above) has one cup of lemonade to two cups of popcorn!

Now for the science behind this. Our guess is that it has something to do with the popcorn being so full of air that once it is placed in the milk, the milk pushes all the air out of the air pockets filling up all the empty space which then turns the popcorn soggy.