WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TEETH IN SOFT DRINK? (eggshells but I’m being dramatic)

Published 2021-10-05

Eggshell tooth experiment

People say that soft drinks are bad for your teeth, and that has been proven before. But I wanted to find out why it did. So I conducted an experiment to find out what it was about soft drinks that was so bad for your teeth.

The experiment involved a jar of Coca Cola, water, carbonated water, and very sweet cordial. One half eggshell was put into each jar and left to sit for 20 or so days with me periodically taking pictures. The reasoning for all of this was that tooth enamel and eggshells are very similar in material. I would use the water jar as a control group to determine what a normal eggshell would turn out after the experiment (this was for if being in liquid for a long time affected the eggshell, I could know whether it was normal or not), the coke jar was so I could confirm what people have been saying is true, and the cordial/carbonated jars were so I could find out what part of the coke made it decay, the carbonation or the high sugar.

My hypothesis was that the water egg and the carbonated egg would be more or less unchanged while the coke egg and the cordial egg would have very similar changes afterwards.

This entire experiment took 4 jars, 2 eggs, cordial syrup, water, coke and soda-streamer. I labeled each jar and filled them with their respective liquids and put and eggshell in each, I then put them in an area where they would not be disturbed by people or be affected by sunlight in case the uv rays contributed to the decay in some way.

Day 3: not much

Day 6: the decay starts to become visible

Day 12: big increase of the decay in the cordial egg

Day 18: coke and cordial eggs continue to decay further

Day 21: I am able to see the sugar crystals that have formed on the cordial egg

After this experiment I conclude that it is the sweetener (whether it be sugar or an alternative) that causes the decay of the eggs. So it isn’t that all fizzy drinks are bad, it’s that sweet drinks are. If I were to conduct this experiment again, I would include Coke Zero, a coke without the traditional sugar, to see if it would have a different effect, but overall I am satisfied with the result I got and the conclusions I could make from the results.