Hey there! It’s Jay, and I love figuring out how things are built. When I was younger, I went to an engineering camp thinking I’d build skyscrapers and bridges. But guess what? They gave me marshmallows and uncooked spaghetti to build with! It was tricky but super fun. Have you ever tried building with something unusual?
My friend Zishan asked a really cool question: Can you make a real house out of cookies and candy? Imagine living in a house where you could eat a piece of the staircase or nibble on a doorknob! What sweet treats would you use to build your dream house?
People have built amazing things using sweet treats, like castles and bridges made from cookies. The most popular treat for building is gingerbread. It starts soft and squishy, but when baked, it becomes hard and strong, perfect for making walls.
Think about the treats you imagined. Each has special properties, just like real building materials. For example, a licorice stick is bendy, while a peppermint stick is stiff and straight, like a stone column. Chocolate bars are hard and solid, and in Brazil, people even built a chocolate cottage by stacking them like bricks!
In Bryan, Texas, bakers made the world’s biggest gingerbread house. They used thousands of gingerbread pieces and sticky sugar icing to hold them together. But it wasn’t just cookies and candy. They built a concrete base and wooden frame first to make it strong. Why? Because sweet treats can melt or get soggy in the rain, just like a cookie in milk!
Building with cookies and candy is fun to imagine, and it helps us think of new building materials. Engineers have created amazing things by experimenting with unusual materials. They’ve made clear wood you can see through and paths that glow at night by soaking up sunlight.
Food can inspire new materials too! Engineers have used orange peels, cabbage leaves, and even lunchbox leftovers to make a new kind of cement. It’s strong like regular cement but creates less pollution and recycles food waste. You could even eat it after boiling it in water! They’re starting with small items like plates, but maybe one day, you could live in a house made of food!
Thanks for the awesome question, Zishan! We’re taking a short break, but you can vote on what question we should answer next. Do you want to know if the 5-second rule is true, how microwaves work, or who invented the clock? Let us know what you think! Remember, there are mysteries all around us, so stay curious and see you soon!
Build Your Own Sweet Structure: Gather some marshmallows, uncooked spaghetti, and other candies like gumdrops or jelly beans. Try building a small house or a bridge. Think about which candies are best for different parts of your structure. Are marshmallows good for walls, or do they work better as connectors? Share your creation with your family and explain why you chose each candy for your design.
Sweet Treats Experiment: Choose a few different candies or snacks, like chocolate bars, licorice sticks, and cookies. Test their strength by trying to bend, break, or stack them. Which ones are the strongest? Which ones bend without breaking? Write down your observations and think about how these properties could be useful in building something.
Imagine Your Candy House: Draw a picture of your dream house made entirely of sweets. Label each part with the candy you would use and explain why you chose it. For example, you might use chocolate bars for the walls because they are strong and solid. Share your drawing with a friend or family member and ask them what candies they would use for their house.
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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Hey, it’s Jay! I’ve always been curious about how things are built. As a kid, I signed up for engineering camp, imagining designing skyscrapers and bridges. But when I got there, they handed me marshmallows and uncooked spaghetti. Building with those materials was challenging but fun! Maybe you’ve built something similar.
Someone named Zishan has a question about building with unusual materials. Let’s give Zishan a call now.
Hi, Jay! Hi, Zishan! I have a question for you: Can you make a real house out of cookies and candy? Ooh, great question! Maybe you’ve played a game like Candyland before, competing to reach a Candy Castle, or enjoyed stories with candy kingdoms or incredible edible rooms. But could we build places like these for real? Imagine having a slice of a staircase or nibbling on a doorknob. I’m curious what sweet treats you would choose for building a house. Now would be a good time to pause the video to discuss.
Okay, are you ready? People have built some amazing things out of sweet treats, from castles and bridges to skyscrapers and miniature cities. The main material for these creations is cookies, specifically gingerbread. Gingerbread starts out as a soft and squishy dough, which can be cut into different shapes. Once it’s baked, though, gingerbread becomes hard and stiff, which helps it stand up to make things like walls.
Now I’m curious about the sweet treats you imagined. Those treats have properties too, and you might be able to build with them in different ways, just like real building materials are good for different jobs. Take this licorice stick and this peppermint stick. They have a similar shape, but the licorice is flexible and can bend, while the peppermint stick stays stiff and straight. That could work well for holding things up, similar to a stone column.
Check out this bar of chocolate—it’s hard and solid. If you push on it, it doesn’t squish down. These properties inspired the staff at a chocolate shop in Brazil to wonder if you could stack chocolate bars like real bricks. Turns out you can! They stacked dozens of chocolate bars to build a chocolate cottage big enough to stand inside.
And remember those gingerbread creations? This is the record holder for the world’s biggest gingerbread house. Bakers in Bryan, Texas, made thousands of gingerbread panels and used sticky sugar icing to hold them in place. That’s real icing you can eat! It’s definitely big enough to be a house, but I have to be honest: it’s not all cookies and candy. First, a concrete base, wooden frame, and roof were built, and then the gingerbread and icing were added on top.
Can you guess why they had to build it that way? Houses are often built from materials like wood, bricks, concrete, and metal, which are strong, solid, and hard. You have to really push or pull to break them, and their properties stay strong in different kinds of weather for years. But can you imagine that chocolate cottage outside on a really hot day? Yikes, total meltdown! Or think about dunking a cookie in milk. You know how it soaks it up and gets soggy? That’s usually delicious, but not if it’s your house. That giant gingerbread house had to be wrapped in plastic each time it rained, like a giant raincoat. Without that extra protection and the wooden frame holding it up inside, it would have become a soggy, crumbling mess. Even with that help, it could only stay up for a few days before it was taken apart, and all the wood was donated to help build real homes.
Clearly, building a cookie and candy house comes with challenges, but it’s great to imagine how you might do it. In fact, it’s the kind of creative thinking that helps us come up with new building materials. By being curious and experimenting with unusual materials, engineers have invented some surprising things, like this clear square that’s actually wood you can see through, and this path that soaks up sunlight during the day so it can glow at night.
Food can be a big source of inspiration for new materials. Engineers have tested orange peels, cabbage leaves, and even lunchbox leftovers to create a new kind of cement. It has the properties of being strong and hard like typical cement, but making it would create much less pollution and help recycle food waste. Plus, because it’s made entirely from food, you could actually eat it! However, food cement would have to be broken into pieces and boiled in water first. Still, engineers are already dreaming up ways to add scents and flavors. For now, they’re making small items like plates to see how well food cement works. But in the future, maybe you really could have a house made of food, and you could become an engineer who invents new materials with amazing properties that make it possible.
That’s all for this week’s question. Thanks, Zishan, for asking it! Now we’re going to take a break for a few weeks. You can vote on which question you think we should answer when we come back. You can choose from: Is the 5-second rule true? How do microwaves work? Or who invented the clock? So submit your vote when the video’s over. We want to hear from all of you watching. There are mysteries all around us. Stay curious, and see you soon!
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Let me know if you need any further modifications!
