Our first science topic this term is Healthy Lifestyles and Year 5/6 have been investigating just how we find out what different foods and drinks do to our teeth. We didn’t want to do the experiments with our actual teeth, so we used eggs as their shells are similar to the the materials found in the enamel of our teeth. We decided to look at the effects of acids on our teeth. Acids are made by plaque bacteria, which cause tooth decay and cavities. Some foods are acidic too, like vinegar and soda. We immersed an egg in vinegar and… after leaving it for just a little bit, we could already see some results! Our ‘vinegar’ egg was on the point of turning transparent and it felt more than a little soft! Scary results indeed!
We also soaked some eggs in a variety of fizzy soda drinks to test how these would affect our teeth. We left them in a range of fizzy drinks for half an hour and then looked at the changes that happened. They seemed very stained! Could we brush them back to a pearly-white with our toothbrushes? Come and ask us to find out our results.
Like eggshells, teeth can be weakened by acids and stained by highly coloured foods, and our experiment helped us to see that good making good food choices, along with good dental hygiene, is really important to keep our teeth healthy.
After these experiments we decided that we wanted to know even more about how all those lovely sauces, like ketchup, that a lot of us (including myself) are tempted to put on everything we eat, affect us.
