Date: Sat, 15 Jul 1995 15:50:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Goob (pxmst4+@pitt.edu)
Subject: A survey of the properties of m&m's in heat.
To: List Dan&Eric (danampersanderic+@andrew.cmu.edu), SIGHATE@danampersanderic.org

Purpose

To determine the effects, if any, of extreme atmospheric conditions on m&m's. This is in an effort to investigate the 'melts in your mouth' claim of the makers of m&m's. Plus to see what happens.

Method

Seeing that the temperature outside was 99F degrees, the researcher placed six m&m's, one of each color, on a marble slab that was part of the ediface of the Hillman Library, University of Pittsburgh Campus, Pittsburgh, PA. USA. The test m&m's were in open air and direct sunlight. A control group of six m&m's was placed in the air conditioning of the library. Each group was checked every five minutes.

The heat stress factor outside was rated at 105F degrees. This was not correlated, because little is known about how m&m's deal with heat stress.

Results

The following charts show the recorded observations of the test m&m's at five minute intervals:

Color	5 min.		10 min.		15 min.		20 min.
-------	---------------	---------------	---------------	----------------
Red	intact		no change	no change	no change
Orange	crack in shell	no change	crack widens	no change
Yellow	crack in shell	no change	slightly sticky	stain formed 
Green	crack in shell, no change	moisture evap.	no change
	moisture oozing
	out of shell
L Brown	crack in shell,	no change	no change	no change
	moisture oozing
	out of shell
D Brown	moisture oozing	no change	more moisture	moisture evap.
	out of shell

Color	25 min.		30 min. - Final results
-------	---------------	-----------------------------------------------
Red	glistening	glistening, but intact
Orange	crack widens	soft, cracked
Yellow	stain grows	soft, sticky, cracked
Green	no change	sticky, cracked
L Brown	deformed,	soft, cracked
	cracked
D Brown sticky		sticky, cracked

Notes

1. The low rate of change observed at the ten minute mark was probably due to the sun being occluded by clouds for much of that five minute period.
2. At the fifteen minute mark, the largest pigeon the researcher has ever seen attempted to eat the experiment. After fending it off, the researcher later found the pigeon attempting to urinate on his foot.
3. At the twenty minute mark, all m&m's exhibted a glistening sheen except for the red one.
4. Blue m&m's were not tested in this experiment; this is largely due to fears of funding cuts and exposition in 'Time'.
5. The control m&m's exhibited no change, and were quite tasty.

Conclusions

1. Red m&m's are not from this planet. They cannot be reasoned with.
2. Sitting in the sun watching m&m's melt for 30 minutes is a fairly asinine thing to do, even in the name of science.
3. Being that the average temprature of a given person's mouth is 98.6F degrees, and that the test conditions were slightly more rigorous, the researcher can only conclude that the atmosphere doesn't chew.

Other researchers are encouraged to repeat this experiment and report their findings. Thank you!

'Goob' - pxmst4+@pitt.edu | Cats are essentially narcissistic masochists.