Final answer:
When sugar is added too early or too quickly to meringue, the mixture will collapse and can become grainy. Burning sugar with a flame causes it to char due to combustion, resulting in carbon and water vapor.
Step-by-step explanation:
If sugar is added too early or too quickly to a meringue mixture, the meringue will collapse. This is because the sugar disturbs the formation of stable air pockets within the egg whites that are essential for a light and fluffy meringue. Adding sugar too quickly can also cause the meringue to become grainy, as it prevents the sugar from dissolving properly.
Regarding the process of sugar burning, when table sugar is placed in a spoon over a high flame, it is the heat from the flame that causes the sugar to char and turn into a blackened mixture. This charring is essentially the sugar undergoing a process of combustion, reacting with oxygen in the air to produce carbon and water vapor as a result of the high heat. A simplified version of the chemical equation for this reaction is sucrose (C12H22O11) + oxygen (O2) → carbon (C) + water (H2O).