Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I have a titration lab where we titrated sprite that was flat. One point of confusion for me was the question that was asking about why it was important for the sprite to be flat, and what impact it would have on the data if it wasn’t flat. I can’t seem to comprehend this part. Could anyone explain it to me? Thank you!

Hello,

This sounds like a fun lab experiment! Titration can be done to determine the amount of acid in a liquid. Soft drinks often contain several different acids. In cola products, this is predominantly carbonic acid (from the carbonation) and phosphoric acid. In Sprite, the acids are carbonic acid and citric acid. By letting the Sprite go flat before your titration you let the carbonic acid out of the liquid so your titration was only measuring the citric acid content.

Audrey