I can see this conversation in my head.
And thus was born the cinnamon challenge. Here is a short video showing this challenge. If the video had a title, it would be "This is your brain. This is your brain on cinnamon."
Really, I would not do this. It's not worth the possibility of internet fame.
Why?
There are really two "why" questions here. Why would you do this? Also, why does this happen? Why is it so difficult to put a spoonful of cinnamon in your mouth?
I am not a food scientist, but if I had to guess I would say that the cinnamon just does not dissolve in the saliva in your mouth. So cinnamon might be hydrophobic (not afraid of water but repelling water). The result is a mouthful of air born cinnamon powder that you can't swallow. Just a guess. But what is better than a guess? An experiment!
Experiment 1: Pour Water on Cinnamon
Why not start with the obvious? I took as much cinnamon from the kitchen as I dared (not so much that anyone should notice). Then I poured some water on top of it. Here is what you get.
It doesn't look like it is mixing with the water too much. You can see some parts that are still completely dry. Also, some of the dry cinnamon was thrown out like you would see if a meteor hit the moon.
Experiment 2: Other Materials
What if this isn't a property of the cinnamon so much as it is a property of particle size? What if I look at some other materials that are about the same in terms of particle size? Really, this is just stuff I found. I probably could have done a better job. Here I have coffee creamer, cayenne pepper, and powdered sugar to go along with the cinnamon.
Instead of pouring water into the powders, I put a roughly equal amount of powder into 4 different containers of water. After not too long (like 1 minute) this is what it looked like:
The creamer is pretty much evenly spread out throughout the whole volume of water (making it look cloudy). The sugar dissolved very quickly. But look at the cinnamon and the cayenne. Both of these did not evenly mix. Here is a closer shot after some time (around 30 minutes).
In both cases, some of the powder sank to the bottom. However, the cinnamon still looks different. For the surface of the cayenne, the pepper seems to be evenly spread out. Not so for the cinnamon. So, cinnamon clearly seems to be hydrophobic. Cayenne pepper doesn't mix as well as sugar or creamer, but it isn't as bad as the cinnamon. Really, what I need to do is to grid up the pepper so it is just as fine as the cinnamon.
A Cinnamon Challenge Model
Is it possible to make something that I can use to test different materials without actually putting a big spoonful in my mouth? Maybe. Here is a short video where I show you my model. Basically, I used an old film container and a syringe. The container as two holes in the top. One of the holes is for the syringe. I will quickly push water into the container using the syringe. The other hole is for air (and whatever else) escapes.
I think if I put more cinnamon and less water, I would get the famous cloud of cinnamon result as you see in the cinnamon challenge videos.
Conclusion
For those of you too busy to read the whole post, here is the summary. Cinnamon Challege = a bad idea. Don't do it.
