Group 3

First day (Thursday, 22nd April 2010):

The topic our group, which consists of four students Maria, Ankita, Alvaro and Rahul, chose to focus on was Teeth (which is related to Bathroom Science for obvious reasons). The day started with the four of us planning which experiments to carry out for each of the individual subjects - Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Environmental System. After an initial brainstorming session, with each one of us giving their ideas, we unanimously decided the best 2 ideas for each of the sciences.

For the CHEMISTRY component we would be investigating the effect of acids on teeth (with and without fluoride) and how effective different brands of toothpaste were in neutralizing an acid (coca-cola). Both experiments, we thought, were important in raising our awareness about the importance of fluoride which is present in most toothpastes and brushing our teeth regularly in order to eliminate/neutralise the acids which remain in our tooth after consumption of some products. However, we wanted to know how an acid really affects our teeth. 

Thus for the BIOLOGY component, we came up with two experiments in which we would be investigating the effect of the same acid (coca-cola) on a real tooth and how an acid affects other mechanisms. The mechanism that we decided to study was enzyme activity, more precisely how acidity affected amylase activity. 

For the PHYSICS component the two experiments chosen were to study the amount of force required to bite two different types of products (using two models of different areas) and the viscosity of different brands of toothpaste.

Second day (Friday, 23rd April 2010):

We carried out most of our experiments today. Some of them are going to be left untouched until wednesday (i.e. Physics experiment which investigates the difference in viscocity of different toothpastes and Biology experiment which investigates effect of acids on teeth) whilst others have been completed already. All of them gave conclusive results except one. One of the ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS' experiments was to measure the solubility of different brands of toothpaste but this experiment failed because the differences in weight recorded did not follow any trend as the filter paper did not fulfill its purpose of filtering the insoluble parts of the most insoluble toothpastes. Thus we will have to carry out the two remaining experiments (both for Environmental Systems) Wednesday as well as prepare the presentation. It is fair to say that so far so good!

Third day (Wednesday, 28th April 2010):

Last day and the pressure is rising! All four of us had really busy weekends with the write ups of these experiments. We divided the experiment write-ups to do on the weekend, Rahul wrote up both of the physics experiments, Maria wrote up both biology experiments, Ankita wrote up both chemistry experiments and Álvaro wrote one of the Environmental systems experiment as the other one was still to be done. 

Today, Maria and Álvaro were putting up all the work together in a powerpoint presentation, whilst Rahul was taking the results from the Physics experiment which had the aim of finding the difference in viscocity of different toothpastes and the Biology experiment which had the aim of investigating the effect of acids on teeth, and Ankita was doing the last ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS (linked to CHEMISTRY) experiment which was to find the harness of water and how it affects our teeth.

We would like to thank our teachers/supervisors: Miss Smith, Miss Mitchell, Miss Davis, Mrs. Shaw (for preparing all our solutions and supporting us) and  finally Mr. Stedman for all the advice and help given during these three days. 

We just gave you an overview of what we did in these three days and told you the aims for each of our experiments were, but we hope you enjoy our final presentation below, as for it explains each of the experiments thoroughly.

We hope you enjoy the presentation. Here is the link which will allow you to download it:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SX9WP2X4