Bubblegum Day

What the day is

Bubblegum Day is observed on February 5. It doubles as a school fundraiser in some places, where pupils pay a small sum for permission to chew in class.

Origin and background

Ordinary chewing gum will not hold a bubble. It tears rather than stretching, because the gum base lacks the elasticity to thin out into a membrane without splitting. Making a gum that could was a genuine formulation problem, and early attempts were too sticky to remove from a face.

It was solved in 1928 by Walter Diemer, an accountant at a Philadelphia gum company who experimented in his spare time. His mixture was stretchier and notably less sticky, and it worked. The color is the good detail: pink was simply the only food dye in the factory at the time, so he used it, and bubble gum has been pink more or less ever since because that first batch set the expectation.

The physics of a bubble is the same as a soap bubble, with a stretched membrane and air pressure inside, except that the gum's own elasticity does the work that surface tension does in soap. The reason a bubble eventually bursts is that the membrane thins unevenly as it expands until the weakest point fails.

The old warning that swallowed gum sits in the stomach for seven years is false. The base is indigestible and passes through like any other fiber, normally within a day or two. Very large quantities swallowed by small children have occasionally caused blockages, which is the real and much rarer concern.

Chewing gum is also the most common litter after cigarette ends in many cities, and it is expensive to remove because it bonds to pavement.

How to take part

• Blow a bubble, and note it fails at the thinnest point rather than the biggest.
• Tell someone the seven years story is false.
• Wrap used gum in paper and bin it rather than dropping it.
• Run it as a fundraiser if you work in a school, which is the day's other use.
• Look up Diemer's original pink accident.