Egg-citing Results!

Year 4 had lots of fun learning about dental care and teeth through carrying out an enquiry last week. Just to recap, we placed eggs in six different liquids to see if any changes wold occur. This would inform us about the damage liquid can do to our teeth as the egg shell that protects the egg inside, is similar to to the enamel that protects our teeth! Yesterday, it was time to check our eggs, and record any observations.

 

As we all predicted, the milk and water did not affect the eggs whatsoever, so as a class we came to the conclusion that milk and water are drinks that will not damage our teeth. However, the rest of the results were quite surprising! The egg that was placed in vinegar completely changed. It was no longer hard, and in fact it was described as bouncy! The shell had completely dissolved. Luckily for us, vinegar isn't something we normal drink, so we weren't too worried. We moved onto the cola, the drink most of us predicted would do the most damage, and to our surpise, although the shell was stained black, the shell itself was still intact with no observable damage. This made us conclude that cola could stain our teeth! Blackcurrant squash was up next, a firm favourite drink in year 4, and something we all assumed would do little damage. To our horror, it the egg appeared to have been affected the most, out of all of the other eggs! We were all shocked, and one class member used the word "diabolical!" Not only had the shell changed colour and began to disappear, the inside of the egg had began to seep out!

 

After looking at all of the eggs, we had a discussion about what these results suggested. Our final conclusion was that we should be drinking more milk and water, as these drinks do not damage our teeth. More importantly, sugary drinks can have a big effect on our teeth, and we need to make sure if we are drinking sugary drinks we brush our teeth twice a day! What a fantastic, insightful experiment to help us further our understanding of teeth and dental care!