Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hey, I'm Sarah and i need help on my science fair. I looking to see what kind of breth mint last longest, tic-tacs or icebrakers. The thing is i dont know what to research,can someone help?

Hi Sarah,

Welcome to the forum! In case you haven't seen it, you might find our project guide helpful: http://www.sciencebuddies.com/science-f ... ndex.shtml

Before you start experimenting, you will want to develop some testable hypothesis based on your research -- it sounds like this might be of the form "Tic-tacs will dissolve faster than Icebreakers mints [or vice versa] because _____." To develop the hypothesis, you probably want to find out (1) what factors influence how fast something dissolves and (2) what the properties of tic-tacs and icebreakers are (what the ingredients are, surface area/mass/volume, if there are layers of different materials, etc). You might find that they differ in more than one property that could affect how long they last, and in that case it could be difficult to determine which one caused the results that you see. In that case, you could add more kinds of mints to your study, such different flavors or sizes of the same mint. All variables except the kind of mint should be constant, and different people produce different amounts of saliva, the same person might move their tongue around more or swallow more often with a different mint, etc -- so you might want to create a standardized environment to test how long they last instead of having people suck on them. This is also something to think about while you're reading.

In addition to general info about dissolution and the different kinds of mints, you might find studies by the manufacturers or consumer advocacy groups that test manufacturers' claims with similar experiments. There's also a television show called Unwrapped that shows how different foods are made, so you could look through an episode list for something about mints in general or even the ones you've specified. Sounds like you have an interesting project!

Best wishes, and keep us posted,
Amanda

First, thank you. Secont,I was just un the tic-tac website and couldn't find what ingredients were in it. Sould i look on a paket of them? I was planing to put them in water, do you think the ould desolve slower in water? My mother think the would.

Getting the ingredients from a box is a good first step. They will be listed in descending order by weight, meaning that in a list like

ingr1, ingr2, ingr3, ...

there is a larger mass of ingr1 than of ingr2, a larger mass of ingr2 than ingr3, etc. However, a package won't tell you the exact amount or percentage by weight of the ingredients. So, as a simplified example, if product A has 60% ingr1 and 40% ingr2, and product B has 98% ingr1 and 2% ingr2, both A and B will simply list ingr1, ingr2. Amounts of some ingredients are listed in grams, but these are always rounded and often reported as zero below some critical value -- definitely an issue since mints are very small. For example, tic-tacs contain sugar (pretty sure they are mostly sugar), but they list 0 g of sugar because their total mass is below the smallest amount of sugar that must be reported:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_tac#Nutrition_facts

You might be able to dig up specific amounts or proportions of ingredients on the internet, or that information might be closely guarded by the company. Even without that, by closely comparing labels you might be able to determine that some kinds of mints contain a larger proportion of some ingredients, or at least that some contain a certain ingredient but others don't.

As for using water: Saliva is mostly water, so it's probably a good approximation, but it does contain other things that help dissolve certain types of foods. I'm not sure how important these other ingredients are for dissolving mints, but you could begin to investigate this by looking at the Wikipedia page on saliva or googling something like saliva water candy dissolve. If you read about solutions/solvents/dissolving in general, you will learn more about these ideas:

--Substances dissolve faster at higher temperatures, and the maximum concentration that can be dissolved is higher at higher temperatures.

--The rate of dissolution (solvation) depends on the concentration already present in the solution -- that's why rates of saliva production and swallowing could affect how long a mint lasts in someone's mouth (not to mention chewing or scraping against the tongue). If the water is not moving very much, it will take the solute longer to diffuse throughout the water, so the local concentration around the dissolving mint will be higher, and it will dissolve a little bit slower than if it were in fresh water that didn't already contain some dissolved mint.

Thinking about this will help you come up with the most realistic experiment possible. Even if you can't create exactly the right conditions -- such as having to use pure water instead of something closer to saliva -- knowing the limitations of your experiment is important for scientific integrity, and it will help you to interpret your results meaningfully.

Hope that helps,
Amanda

Thankys! this helps alot, i couldn't find the ingredien ANYWARE! i'll go check out the difrenses in spit and water now, and i cant find icebrakers online. Sould i buy a pack and see?

Hi Sarah,

I'm not sure whether you mean that you can't find ingredients for tic-tacs or for ice breakers -- the Wikipedia article I linked to before actually listed ingredients as they would be listed on the label, just not with exact proportions. If you can't find any ingredient list for ice breakers, it might be because we have both been spelling it wrong, as I realized when I searched for it. If you search for ice breakers mints ingredients, these are example results:

http://www.walgreens.com/store/product. ... ingredient
http://www.sugarstand.com/sc/sc0091-ice ... -mints.htm

which contain all the info you'd find on a package.

Amanda

okay thank you! Now all i need to do is the exparament now, youve been so mutch help! I count have done my reserch with out you! ^.^

Glad that I could help and that it sounds like you got things figured out! We always like to hear how experiments turn out, so feel free to post back when you've finished or if you have more questions along the way.

Amanda

I'v finnished the exparea ment and found out that it takes tic-tacs the longes to disolve (2hours and 67 min) and i am now makeing my bored

Congrats! Let us know if you have questions about anything. If you look at the link above to the project guide, you might find the sections on Analyzing Your Data and Communicating Your Results helpful at this point.

Good luck,
Amanda