At KIC our presentation is going to be on diet soda. We chose this topic because we wanted to learn more about diet soda so Chris and Ricky would know all about it. We also saw a story in the KIC Journal called the great soda challenge, which influenced us to do research on diet soda.
Our question for KIC is, “Can kids tell the difference between the diet form of a soda from its regular form of soda?” We thought of our question by looking at the KIC journals because there was a story already in the journals. Also because we thought diet soda is a cool topic and after looking at the journals there was only one in there about diet soda.
Diet soda can taste different from regular soda because of the ingredients that they take from the mixture that makes soda. The ingredients in coke are carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sucrose, caramel coloring, phosphoric acid, natural flavors and caffeine. The ingredients in diet coke are carbonated water, caramel coloring, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium citrate, potassium benzoate (a preservative), natural flavor, citrus, and acid.
To answer the question I had, I had to get materials. First, I had to label the cups a and b so I would know which cup had which soda in it. Then I gave the cups to the person who was taking the test. The tried it and then they told me the results. Only 2 out of the 19 people we tried could not tell the difference.
Some facts I discovered were that almost everyone could tell the difference between diet soda and regular soda. Out of 19 people 2 could not tell the difference. That is awesome.
Some things students might want to try next year that are related to this topic is to see which sodas kids like more. Diet soda or regular soda. Some things I would have like to do but did not get a chance to do was a deodorant test that would see which one keeps you smelling better the longest.