Suggestions for teaching selection sort with candy It's the end of the semester, so my students are pretty burnt out, and a bit of sugar might go a long way (plus, evaluations are around the corner ;-). I'm envisioning a tactile class where students would carry out the selection sort algorithm to sort an array of candy bars by length (or height, or size), by physically swapping candy bars. I would also have them write down the number of comparisons required, to get a better understanding of the time complexity. Ideally, every student (or pair) would get 4 pieces of candy. 


  Can anyone suggest candy that naturally comes packaged into 4 or more different sizes?


All I could think of is how Hershey bars can be broken along natural dividing lines into different numbers of squares, and how Toblerone bars also have natural break points. But both are chocolate and might melt. I'm embarrassed to admit I'm not much of an expert on candy bar types.
Actually, I might suggest a slightly different tact: provide a variety of candies (small boxes of nerds, Hershey's kisses, and the like) and have them selection sort by preference order.

They can also sort by height, brightness, weight, or duration of the candy experience.

And as long as you're at it, you might first have them just sort it one of those ways however they do it naturally, which can lead to a nice discussion about why we can't articulate what we're doing very well, but it's some sort of massively parallel selection sort.

Then you can do a number of sorts, culminating in your selection sort by preference order.  And at the very end, tell them all to look around at their neighbors sorts to see if there are any obvious trades that they should be making!