Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

which soda (coke or pepsi) will proudce the biggest burp


What do you think?

Hi bryangullickson, thanks for visiting the ScienceBuddies forum. We are here to help students with their Science Fair projects. If this question pertains to your project, please provide some information and we'd be glad to help you out.

Thanks,
Ryan

dependes what you mean by question

Hi Bryan,
I would suggest you try to elaborate your project question, please refer to the ScienceBuddies Project Guide for more information on that. In the meantime, this sounds like a cool idea, perhaps you could research what are the main causes of burping and see if any of them apply to the ingredients found in coke or pepsi. Good luck!

thank you for that exallent idea I find science buddies the most help full palce on the internet to research
what I am going to do and what im doing

Bryan,

I think us experts are confused about what it is that you need help with. Do you need help refining your question, coming up with an hypothesis, creating an experimental procedure, or something else or a combination of these? If you can tell us what it is you need, we'll be better able to help you.

proabably all of the above

Bryan,

Okay, that helps. Let's start with your question--which soda will produce the biggest burp. One thing you will want to consider is how you will measure 'big'. Do you mean the loudest? The longest? Before you come up with your procedure, you will need to think about what you will actually measure. You might then consider changing the question slightly to reflect this measurement.

As to the hypothesis, I suggest you do what staryl13 suggested--research burping and consider how they would relate to the ingredients in coke or pepsi. Remember, an hypothesis is not just a guess--it is a prediction based on your background research.

Once you do those two things, I think you will have an easier time coming up with your procedure. One thing you will need to keep in mind is how you will control various aspects of your experiment. I would suggest using lots of different people so that you can control for differences between people. I would also not tell these people which soda is which when you give it to them--this way they will not, for example, try harder when they have the soda that they think will make the biggest burp.

Hope all that helps, and let us know if you have more questions once you've done some background research on your topic.

thanks, i was thinking of mesuring it in decibals and. do you have any recmondations for reasarch web sites?

Hi Bryan,

The idea of measuring decibels (to detect the loudest burp) is great!

One thing to note is that some people can burp on purpose, and some of them can even control the size of their burps. You will want to ask your volunteers not to burp on purpose, but to only burp when they feel it coming naturally.

If by research site you mean the place where you conduct your experiment, it really can be anywhere that you find willing participants! Good places to start are schools (even your own). You can also ask family members to participate, so you get a range of ages (adults and children). As MelissaB pointed out, it will be best if you can get lots of different people to participate.

Feel free to post more questions as your project progresses. Good luck!

Cheers,
Heather

Dear Bryan,

Here is a website that explains burping in relation to drinking soda clearly:
http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/yucky/burp.html

Here is some information on Coke:
http://www.virtualvender.coca-cola.com/ft/index.jsp

Here is some information on Pepsi:
http://www.pepsiproductfacts.com/infoby ... =pusa.1067

I have also heard that Coke is more carbonated than Pepsi and it will be interesting to see whether your experimental results confirm that. I hope this helps!

Hi Bryan,
Those are some great suggestions, I definitely agree! In addition, as to the research site, you might want to focus on a particular group of people and narrow it down so that you can conduct your study and get more specific results. Also remember the basic statistics sampling techniques- take a large sample to obtain the most accuracy and separate the people into groups if you can and always remember to minimize possible bias. I think starting at school would be a great idea, perhaps you could compare different grades and males vs. females. Good luck!

thanks for your help i will keep you posted on any thing that comes up in the future

Just curious, it might be difficult to get test subjects to burp in a timely fashion. Personally, when I drink soda, I don't burp 100% or even most of the time. Maybe instead of measuring the volume or strength of individual burps, you could measure the frequency of burps in subjects within 5 minutes of drinking the soda. Most won't burp at all probably, but maybe people will burp more after drinking one drink than they will after another. You could also do some more things related to burping. Maybe, during half of the experiments, you could tell them that you are testing how often they burp, while the other half you don't tell them anything about the experiment. The subjects might burp more often if you tell them you are counting how many times they burp. If you decided to do that, you would have 4 groups in total. 1 coke group where they didn't know what you were testing and were just told to wait 5 minutes, and another coke group where you tell them the purpose. You would do the same for Pepsi. Just consider the different possibilities! Also, try researching on google what causes people to burp. For example, burping can be caused by swallowing excess air, but also by eating certain types of carbs.

-Good Luck, sounds like an interesting experiment!

thanks for your help but 4 groups is a little extreme for the extent of my project i just want to pass my class because it is required that i do a science project in my science class