First off I had to explain to Hermione what a toothpick actually is. Brushing and flossing is fine but she hadn't contemplated the idea of 'picking' before.
We then contemplated buying a big job lot of toothpicks and replicating something like this. That thought passed quickly. Instead we decided to make something a little more modest. Hermione set to it herself while I was making lunch one day and here we have a number of woolly toothpick stars.
I never like to miss an opportunity to plug dental health, being a bit paranoid like many parents about the children's teeth, so we started an experiment.
We took one sparkling white baby tooth....
...and placed it in a glass of coke...
...with a couple of sugar lumps added upon Hermione's insistence, for good measure.
Five days on the tooth is no longer white and sparkly. It's stained, visibly smaller and rough in parts.
Hermione appeared quite repulsed by it, which I was delighted about. I hope she thinks of this when she tries to get away with giving her teeth a really quick once over on a morning. We are going to leave the tooth in the coke for another week and will report back next week. I think it may just essentially dissolve away - we'll see!
We rounded off our project with a story The Lion Who Wouldn't Brush his Teeth by Mike Peele, a happy ending to our toothy activities.
8 comments:
Love the little purse on the post below, lovely work!
We put one of the boys' baby teeth into coke last year, it eventually went black but didn't disappear. Maybe it was the type of coke we used, anyway I shall read with interest what happens to yours! :-)
those are some very cool projects that you did.
Wow! I'm quite impressed... with all of it. The toothpick projects were great and then the tooth demo... cool! Or gross. Whichever way you look at it. :) I think once my kids start loosing their teeth I'll have to do that experiment with them. Great ideas!
OMG that is disgusting! And that is coming from me, the Diet Coke Queen! ewwwwww
Could you try that experiment with diet now?
(btw: I hope you realize that the "disgusting" was a good thing? I learned a lot in this post, in a positive way. I hope and did not mean, to offend!!)
Those stars are marvelous! And the dental lesson was fascinating.
I have heard that Coke is the best substance for cleaning a stainless steel sink.
I can't wait to see what the tooth looks like in another week. What a transformation!
I'm also a bit of a Diet Coke Queen. Worrying isn't it? I'm just going to tell myself that the same thing wouldn't happen with diet and remain blissfully unaware :-)
What a pretty project she came up with and very cool tooth project too.
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