Learning Osmosis: Gummy Bear Experiment

It’s fun to learn in a gummy bear osmosis experiment!

When studying Egypt, or preparing for an extra spooky Halloween you might consider making a chicken mummy. But chicken mummies take about a month to create, so seeing the process of osmosis can be very slow. To see the process of osmosis quickly you can do a gummy bear osmosis experiment.

Osmosis with gummy bears? That sounds like a tasty science experiment since a whole package of gummy bears will surely lead to extras on hand!

Gummy Bear Osmosis: A fast experiment to see osmosis in action

learning osmosis home lab experimentReady to see osmosis in action with gummy bears?
Put two gummy bears in different cups. Fill one cup with fresh water, and one cup with salt water.

Ask yourself (and your students or kids)

  • What do you think might happen?
  • Is there an area that has a lot of salt or sugar? Is there an area that does not?

Learning about osmosis
Osmosis is the process of evening out concentrations. Nature doesn’t like it when one area has all of the salt or sugar while another area does not. It will move water around to try and equalize concentrations in the whole jar. Knowing that you can think about these questions:

  • Where will the water in the freshwater cup flow to?
  • Where is the high concentration of salt or sugar?

Here’s the answer
In the case of fresh water, water will flow from outside the gummy in to try and make the two concentrations of sugar the same. This will make the gummy bear very large over the course of a day, or even overnight.

Remember, this process of trying to even out concentrations is called osmosis.

Play the video below to see what happens when you put a gummy bear in fresh water overnight!

Potato Osmosis is even faster than gummy bear osmosis.

If you want even faster osmosis results than you get with the gummy bears, you can put slices of a potato in salt water and in fresh water.

Again, ask yourself (and your students or kids)

potato osmosis experiment

What do you think will happen?

There are a few salts in the potato itself. Once you have thought about it, go ahead and slice up a potato to try the experiment for yourself, then check your answers with our video below!

I hope you enjoyed our two quick osmosis experiments that can help students understand osmosis in a hands-on inquiry fashion!

You’ll notice that in the salt water there is so much salt in the water around the potato that the water wants to leave the potato.

That is because nature wants to try and even out the salt concentrations between inside and outside of the potato. Again, this process of trying to even out concentrations is called osmosis.

In the fresh water, the situation is different.

Instead, the water sees a lot of salts in the potato and no salts in the surrounding water.

In this situation, nature will try and dilute the salts inside the potato through osmosis. This will plump up the potato with extra water.

Looking for another fun experiment with osmosis?

Make french fries and see which kind you like better, those that are limp from being soaked in salt water for a little while versus those that are plump from being in the fresh water for an equal amount of time. Make sure you fry or bake them up using the same methods so you have an accurate taste comparison!

What is osmosis?

Osmosis is when there are different concentrations of something in the water. For the mummies, and our osmosis experiments you can do at home, that is often salt. 

When you have an area that has a ton of salt (or sugar for our gummy bear osmosis experiment) the surrounding water is unhappy. It wants everything to be equal. Because of that water molecules will naturally flow from an area that has very little salt or sugar to an area that has a ton of salt or sugar.

Check out our other fun science activities!

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