how is cotton candy even made? like i get it’s spun in thingy but. still
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The sugar you pour in gets heated until it melts. Once it melts it can squeeze through holes in the spinner and it gets flung outward, where it rapidly cools and becomes a long solid string. Then it just gets all tangled up when you put the stick in to collect it.
In the middle of the spinning wheel is a heating element. Sugar is inserted in a reservoir above it. Sugar melts and can escape the reservoir. The spinning then flings molten sugar outwards. Hurling through the cool air the molten sugar solidifies in a fine, fabric like form that can be picked up by spinning a stick through the cottonized sugar. It takes some practice to make it look really fluffy and appealing.
Engineering wise there really isn’t a whole lot to it but know when sugar melts and figuring out how fast a spin is making the fluffiest sugar threads.
The machine melts the sugar and then blows it out and spins it around through small holes, creating thin strands of flavored sugar essentially, that you then can collect and consume, thats it really.
In the center, you melt sugar. It spins and flings out, causing it to touch the cool air and solidify. Since it it is moving fast, it gets stretched into a string as it cools. They get tangled together to make the cottony structure
You ever go somewhere where it’s really, really, really cold outside, so cold that you can toss a cup of water out and it will freeze into snowy powder before it hits the ground?
Cotton candy is like that, except instead of water, you’re using sugar, which has to be really hot to melt into liquid and turns back into a solid at room temperature. The reservoir in the middle gets really hot and spins really fast. The sugar melts and the centripetal force of the spinning reservoir forces the liquid sugar out of the reservoir through tiny holes in the sides where it rapidly cools and becomes a solid again. But because it’s traveling so fast when it cools, you end up with a sort of wispy string of sugar. Roll up a bunch of those wispy strings around a paper cone and you’ve got cotton candy.
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