It has come to our attention that, as well as being Earth Science Week, it is currently Chocolate Week. An opportunity too good to miss, to combine geology and sweets in a fabulous smorgasbord of delicious learning.

Disclaimer: all of the experiments outlined below are highly technical and scientific, and should in no way be regarded as an excuse to spend friday afternoon/classroom time eating chocolate

Sweets are a great, if slightly cynical, way to engage children in science. So we have set about the arduous challenge of finding the best confectionary for teaching geology – you can use them in classrooms or your own homes, with only a little mess! First up…sedimentary layers using angel cake:

You may not want to eat the cake afterwards...

To demonstrate the different properties of the crust and mantle, chocolate bars are useful. We tried several (tough job) but found double deckers to be the best for demonstrating the brittle properties of the crust compared to the more ductile mantle (yes, we know this is simplifying things a bit!)

before...

...after

On to the structure of the Earth – here we were misled by some false advertising…

Disappointing. We recommend using a ferrero rocher for the full effect…

The core, mantle and crust, perfectly defined!

Not to leave the biscuits out, you can also demonstrate mountain building using custard creams – take off one layer of biscuit and scrape the filling across the other using your teeth:

not very dignified, this one.

You can even demonstrate the rock cycle using chocolate – the full experiments are outlined on our education webpages.

There’s loads more – let us know if you have any suggestions!

It’s not just geology that lends itself well to experiments with food. We leave you with this fabulous video of Sir Patrick Moore sampling space-themed snacks…

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the blog over Earth Science Week – there’ll be more education posts all year round, so keep checking back!