Sugary Teeth Experiment

Many people drink sugary drinks every day, but really how bad is it for your teeth? This project shows the repercussions of drinking sugary soft drinks. This experiment tests eight adult teeth in eight different soft drinks for 48 hours. The results are equivalent to not brushing your teeth for two days or constantly sipping on a soft drink for more than an hour. If the sugar and acid particles are left on the teeth, then more acid is made by the sugar and the enamel starts to wear away. This can lead to tooth decay. Many people do not know how much damage most sugary beverages can do to your teeth, but this test shows the consequences. In this project, the soft drinks were Root beer, SunnyD, Gatorade, Sprite, Fanta, Mt. Dew, Diet Coke, and
The teeth were observed, and the data were recorded.

In this experiment, the controlled variables are the temperature of each liquid, the size of each sterilized adult tooth, the quantity of liquid (1.5 oz.) and the time the teeth are left in the soft drinks (48 hours). The beverages are the independent variables in this experiment. The dependent variables in this test are the amount of enamel loss, tooth decay, and discoloration occurring on each tooth.

According to the tests, Coke did the most overall damage to the tooth, but it was not the most acidic. The most acidic beverage was Diet Coke. Coke, SunnyD, and Diet Coke all had different results, but they had the same amount of damage to the enamel as they did discoloration, so they were ranked as the overall top 3 worst soft drinks for your teeth. After the top 3 the results split by discoloration and damage, they were ranked on a scale of 1-8 of the total effects on the teeth. The least damage done to the tooth were Sprite, Fanta, and Root beer. The least acidic drinks were Sprite, Gatorade, and Root beer. Gatorade did a lot of damage and discoloration, even though it had little
The tooth was very flat and worn down and was very discolored. Root beer was the least harmful to tooth enamel. It had a low acidity and had very few white marks on it. I was very surprised by the Diet Coke, because it was so corrosive, that it left many black and brown clumps (like goo) at the bottom of the cup. They are suspected to be part of the tooth.

In this experiment, the hypothesis stated that darker and more acidic drinks would affect the tooth enamel more than lighter and less acidic beverages. The results of this experiment do not support the hypothesis. Most of the darker colored drinks stained teeth a lot (Coke and Diet Coke), but Root beer left only a slight tint. Also, some less acidic drinks led to more damage on the enamel than some more acidic drinks. Mt. Dew was expected to stain the teeth the most, because of its vibrant green color, but Gatorade-stained more.

Throughout the entire test, there were no problems encountered. This experiment could have run smoother if somebody had written down the observations because I had to keep taking off my gloves every time something needed to be written down. Overall there were no significant