Sara Garchar
November 11, 2003
Bell 3
Organic Chemistry
With the U.S. being the world's leader in total chewing gum consumption, there is no doubt this sweet
and chewy treat plays a major role in our daily lives.
Have you ever thought about how chewing gum is
actually made, or what it is you are actually chewing?
Well, it all has to do with plastics and polymerization.
The History of Chewing Gum
A piece of chewing gum dating back 6,500 years from Bokeburg, Sweden is believed to be from a natural tar.
The ancient Greeks used the resin from the mastic tree called mastiche as a sort of chewing gum.
The Mayan Indians of Mexico chewed chicle which is resin from the sapodilla tree.
American Indians of New England chewed the sap from the spruce tree.
1848: The colonist John Curtis created “State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum”.
1869: William Finely Semple of Mount Vernon, Ohio applied for a patent for making chewing gum from rubber and other ingredients.
1870: Thomas Adams experimented with the sap from the Chiclezapote tree, attempting to make a rubber substitute.
So what's in it?
Five main ingredients...
Gum base
Sugar
Corn syrup
Softeners
Flavorings (usually mint)
Now for the organic chemistry...
The insoluble part left in your mouth while chewing is the gum base, which is a polymer.
The gum base is made of resins from trees, latexes or the milky juices from plants, and manmade polymers.
Chicle, a popular gum base, is a rubbery latex or polyterpene.
Polyterpenes are composed of thousands of C5H8
isoprene units, or monomers.
Such plastics are created through addition polymerization, in which monomers that contain double
bonds add onto each other, one after another, to form long chains.
Sources
Harris, Mary. (2000) Polymers in Chewing Gum.
http://www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/proposal/dreyfus/outcome/gum/gum.htm>
Phillips, John S., & Strozak, Victor S., & Winstrom,
Cheryl (1997). Chemistry: Concepts and Applications Westerville, Ohio: McGraw-Hill
Webster's New World Encyclopedia (1992). New York, New York: Prentice Hall General Reference.
