One rainy spring day, my officemates and I were sitting around lamenting the fact that we couldn't go outside and frolic. Our talk soon turned to microwaves, and things that you should not try to nuke or cool things to nuke that do unexpected things. Obviously, marshmallows fall under the latter category. It came about that one of my officemates, Shaun, had never microwaved a marshmallow and experienced the ensuing joy.
As it so happened, my mom had recently sent me a box of Easter candy (God bless her--I'm now 25 and she still sends me an Easter basket) which included a box of those sweet marshmallow confections, Peeps! Well, we had to show Shaun what happens to marshmallows during the nuking process. So, we took a Peep, a piece of paper, and tromped on down to the department microwave.
We placed the Peep on the paper (didn't want to clean the microwave afterwards!), and the paper in the microwave. We sat the microwave for like 30 seconds (unfortunately, the lounge microwave does not have a light that turns on when the microwave is nuking). Quickly opening the door, Shaun was pleasantly surprised to to see the large proportions which the Peep had taken in the nuking process. However, as anyone who has done this before knows, the marshmallow quickly regresses back to roughly its original size (a little worse for wear, however).
When we took the paper out of the microwave, we made the discovery which has resulted in Peep Art--the Peep sticks to the paper! You can tape the paper to the wall, displaying the Peep in all its glory, and the Peep veritably defies gravity! Pretty amazing--try it at home!
In later testing, we have found that if you put the Peep on a piece of paper, put the paper on the floor, and then either bounce a basketball on the Peep or step on the Peep, it will still stick to the paper. See Peep 9 for an example of this method of creating Peep Art.