How much sugar is in your favorite drink?

Table of Contents

Title Page pg. 1 Table of Contents pg. 2 Abstract pg. 3 Purpose pg. 4 Hypothesis pg. 4 Materials pg. 4 Procedures pg. 5 Results & Graph pg. 6 Conclusions pg. 7 Bibliography pg. 8 Acknowledgements pg.9

Pg.3
Abstract
Purpose:
The purpose of my experiment is to measure the densities of different drinks and determine their sugar contents using a calibration curve obtained by plotting the densities for a series of reference solutions verses percent sugar. I experimentally determined the density of each drink and then used the calibration curve graph to determine the percent sugar for the drinks. This will be compared against the information provided on their nutritional labels to evaluate the accuracy of this method.

Hypothesis: How well does the sweet taste of a drink correlate with the amount of sugar it contains? By tasting several drinks, I predicted the relative sugar content in the following drinks: Dr. Pepper, Coke, Gatorade, Apple Juice, and Grape Juice. (Rank the drinks from 1, highest sugar content, to 5, lowest sugar content.)

Procedure:
1. I placed a clean dry plastic weighting boat on the balance and hit zero to take away the mass of the weighing boat. This was to get the mass of only the drink.
2. Next, I used a pipette bulb to fill a 10.0 mL pipette to the line on the pipette.
3. I measured and recorded the mass of the beverage in the weighing boat.
4. Then, I re-zeroed the balance with a clean, dry weighing boat and added 10.0 mL of the second drink to the weighing boat to be able to measure and record the mass of the second drink in the weighing boat.
5. I continued doing this process to other drinks, using steps three through five in the same way.
6. I calculated and recorded the density of each drink. Density is mass per unit of volume, so I divided each mass by ten milliliters.
7. I used the calibration curve and the density of each drink to experimentally determine the percent of sugar in each drink.
8. I used the grams per mL of sugar dissolved and the density of each drink to determine the calculated percent sugar of each drink.
9. I used the following formula to determine the percent error for each drink.
Results:
The experimentally determined percent sugar ranged from 7.0% for Gatorade to 16.5% for grape juice. The calculated percent sugar ranged from 5.9% for Gatorade to 15.0% for grape juice. The percent errors ranged from 2.7% for Dr. Pepper to 34% for apple juice. The grape juice and the Dr. Pepper had the highest percentage of sugar.

Conclusions:
In conclusion, only the sweetest tasting drink, the grape juice, and the two least sweet tasting drinks, the Gatorade and the apple juice, matched my predicted rating rank of sweetness. The Dr. Pepper, Coke, and apple juice had very similar percentages of sugar. Just because you are drinking fruit juices does not mean your body may be getting too much sugar, because the experiment showed fruit juices are high in sugar. Both fruit juices said on their label that no sugar was added. When looking at the nutritional label of Gatorade, I noticed that it does not have high sugar content as I was expecting because it was not as sweet. Sports drinks like Gatorade are high in potassium and sodium, not sugar.

Pg. 4
How much sugar is in your favorite drink?

Background: The density of a solution depends on its concentration, that is, how much sugar is dissolved in the liquid of the drinks. If the density of a