What Drink Stains Your Teeth the Most?

Abstract:

What Drinks Stain Your Teeth?

I chose to investigate whether or not tea, coke, and coffee stain your teeth. My hypothesis was that I thought that the coffee was going to stain the most. I thought that it would stain the most because it has a lot of caffeine and that isn’t good for your teeth. I chose this topic because because I thought it would be interesting to see which drink I should drink the least in fear of having yellow teeth. Also, I wanted to know because I drink coke and iced tea and I wanted to know if it was a bad idea to drink them as much as I do.

I did this experiment by leaving hard boiled eggs in room temperature iced tea tea, coke, and coffee for two days. Then after the two days were up I took them up and put them in baggies labeled what drink it was dipped in and which test it was. I did this three times which is why I also labeled the baggies what number test it was. After I was done dipping all nine hard boiled eggs, I rated the eggs yellowness on a scale of 1-5 and found an average for each drink. The drink with the highest average stains the most.

For the first test, coke was by far the most stained. Second was coffee and third was tea which had barely any color. I rated the egg dipped in coke a 5, coffee got a 3, and tea got a 1 . For the second test coke was rated a 5, tea got a 2, and coffee got a 1. Finally, in my third testing of the eggs, coke got a 5, tea a 1, and coffee with a 2.

Procedure

• 1. Hard boil 3 eggs

  2. Dip eggs into coke, iced tea, coffee

  3. Leave eggs there for 2 days

  4. Take eggs out and rate discoloredness 1-5

  5. Repeat 2 more times

Hypothesis

My hypothesis was that coffee would stain the eggs the most. I thought this because coffee has a lot of caffeine. If you drink a lot of caffeine, that can be really bad for your teeth. Sometimes, it makes them yellow.

Problem

Which drink stains your teeth the most? The reason why I am doing this experiment is to figure out which drink is okay to have more than others. For example, coffee may stain your teeth more than tea so you can drink tea more than you drink coffee. Coffee may stain more because it has a lot of caffeine and caffeine isn’t good for the health and color of teeth.

Conclusion:

In my experiments I saw that coke scored the highest every time. However it didn’t get the same score every time and neither did coffee or tea. In the first two tests, coke got a 5 and then a 4. Coffee got a 3 and then a 1. When I tested tea, it got a 1, and then a 2. In the third testing, coke got a 5, coffee got a 2, and tea got 1. I found these answers by using a color scale to rate my eggs.

Scale of Egg Color:

Coke’s Scores:

• • 5 (first test)

  • 4 (second test)

  • 5 (third test)

Tea’s Scores:

• • 1 (first test)

  • 2 (second test)

  • 1 (third test)

Coffee’s Scores:

• • 3 (first test)

  • 1 (second test)

  • 2 (third test)

Chart:

Table: