Sunday, January 08, 2006

Hope floats, sugar sinks

What a fun experiment: Apparently if you put both a can of Coke and a can of Diet Coke in a tank of water, the Coke will sink, and the Diet Coke will float. (I love how the Web page, apparently meant for teachers, orders them to "look surprised.")

Can anyone try this at home and verify it? I personally never touch sugared sodas, since I have a few million other ways to get unwanted calories, so I have none in the house. Although a certain software company in whose offices I might just spend a lot of time has plenty of both sodas on hand. Hmm ...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gael,

I can attest that this is true. Friends of mine did this (back in '91) as science fair project. They demonstrated it in an aquarium, just like the photo. It seemed to work for other types of diet pop as well.

I, too, loathe sugared pop (I'm from Canada; we call it pop!). Those 39 g of sugar mean nearly 160 calories vs. the 1 you'd be getting in Diet. And sugared pop makes my teeth feel fuzzy!

Anonymous said...

Agreeing with Sarah - and in a country with the metric system, we know how much 39 grams is. I had no *idea* a can of Coke contained 39g of sugar! That's 1.37 oz., a shot glass and a half.

Dimestore Lipstick said...

It works with regular vs. diet Sierra Mist, anyway. The only thing I had on hand in both versions.

Anonymous said...

My chem teacher did that experiment the second day of class last semester, it works. Cool, too, since I'd never heard of it before.