Re: Tic-Tac calorie lab...

[palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)]

>        Greetings everyone.  I've been preparing for a future calorie lab
> and thought I would try something new.  I thought it would be kind of fun
> to have the students make the distinction between calories and Calories
> (kcal) by using tic-tac (breath mints).  Tic-Tac claims that they have
> 1.5 calories on the front of their labels, but on the back label (in very
> fine print) it states that the calores is are measured in 1000 cal.  I
> tried different types of tic-tacs and other breath mints, but I could not
> get them to burn.  The only thing I could make them do is melt and turn a
> brownish color.  Can anyone recommend as to how to measure the calories
> of these breath mints?  For some reason, they just won't work or I keep
> eating them.  :-)

I'm not by any means an expert on this, but I believe that if you did
succeed in burning a Tic-Tac you might not get the result listed. Those
are nutritional Calories (large C means kilocalories) and not combustion
calories. If you care, you may eat all the charcoal briquettes you like
and you won't be ingesting much in the way of nuritive value. They are
about the same shape as Tic-Tacs, so the result should scale nicely with
a cube law, and of course they burn well. Lots of Calories for the bomb
calorimeter; none to put the weight on. Few are likely to prefer them to
Tic-Tacs as candy, however.

Leigh