Hello all,

My sister likes to drink tea. She boiles the water in an electric watercooker. Next she pours the water in a glass teapot, with a teabag and 3 kubes of sugar. Without stirring, she puts the teapot on the stand with a candle under it. After a couple of seconds you see small explosions within the suger. In the teapot. At first I thought it must be the breaking of the water that the flame appeared to be in the tea. But I realy don't think it is... It looks like the sugar is exploding. You can even hear them pop.

I was fascinated. What is happening in my sisters teapot???

Has she tried adding the sugar to boiling water in the dark? My guess is that the candle flame is intermittently reflected as the dissolving crystals rearrange themselves, and the popping noise would be due to rearrangement as well.