Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

i have an experiment about soda. it'll be like,, I will take two teeth from the same person and clean them with antibacteria. Then, place one in ordinary bottled water, and the other with a soda. is it a good one, or should i start a new one?[

Hi illeval. Let's see if we can help you.

BTW, this isn't a real time message board. It sometimes takes a little time for reponses to be posted to your requests. All the experts are volunteers, and we have lives too. Anyway, enough of the lecture.

I have a few questions about your experiment. First, how are you planning to get the teeth from a person? Not sure I want to be close to you when you are doing that.

Second, what do you mean by antibacteria? Do you mean one of the alcohol based antibacterial gels, or antibacterial liquid soap (which really isn't soap)?

Were you planning on coating the teeth with the liquid and leaving them out in the environment, or somehow introducing bacteria to them?

Lots of other questions. You need to think about how you will perform the experiment. Start by posing a research question. Something in the form of "What is the effect of X on Y?" Then think about how you will design an experiment to test your question? Think about what your hypothesis will be, what variables you will keep constant, and which SINGLE variable you will change in your experiment.

Please read the information on this web site regarding how to perform a science fair experiment. It is very well written, and can provide you a tremendous amount of information on how to best design and conduct your experiment.

When you have further thought out your experiment, if you have more detailed questions, we would be most happy to provide assistance.

Good luck, and have fun.

Illeval:

BTW, you might want to post this instead on the Life sciences forum. It is really a life sciences question, not physical science. There will be experts more in tune with that field of science there (although, yes we do deal with bacteria a little bit in medicine