My Cousin Has Come Through!

OK, so the question we were all asking....why did the diet pop explode and not the regular pop....has been answered by my very intelligent cousin. Here is the excerpt from his email to me regarding this all important question:




...Second, you're lucky I'm such a nerd. First, I'm so nerdy that I have a nerdy fiance too, who got the ball rolling with a suggestion regarding differences in properties of nutrisweet and sugar. This made me think of freezing point depression, and jogged my brain about a class Last semester. Here, too, my nerdiness came through in spades, as this class was poorly-taught and most of my classmates typically skipped it. Those of us present saw a table about relative sweetness of sugar products that (I think) can be brought directly to bear on this situation. I'm even so nerdy that I download and keep all the presentation files from all my classes, so I looked up the table in question just to make sure I remembered it right.
Using some arbitrary value for "sweetness" (how sweet a certain sugar tastes), sucrose is valued at 1.0, fructose (which I assume is used in regular coke) is 0.84, and glucose is 0.46. In contrast, Aspartame is valued at 200. So if you can generate a certain amount of sweetness by adding 1000 molecules of fructose, you only need to add about 5 molecules of aspartame to get the same degree of sweetness (unrealistic numbers--for illustration only). This brings us to freezing point depression/boiling point elevation. When you dissolve particles in water, those particles disrupt the interactions of the water molecules with each other so that it takes more heat to boil it or more cold to freeze it (this is also how antifreeze in the car radiator or salt on the roads works). The more particles dissolved, the greater the depression or elevation (add more antifreeze to the radiator in the winter to make sure your engine doesn't freeze even down into the teens). So my guess is that the diet soda had less sweetener dissolved in it and therefore was able to freeze at a higher temperature than the regular soda which required more sweetener to attain the same relative sweetness. The temperature must have dropped enough to freeze the diet, but not enough to freeze the regular.





So, there it is....I would like to clarify something. I don't think that he is nerdy and even though I have never met his fiance, I have seen several pictures (thanks to his proud Mom) and she in no way looks nerdy either. I am sure you will all agree, when I post pictures of this cute couple come Aug (that is when they get married and Tyty is the ringbearer, so my camera will be clicking). Richard has an incredible mind that I can't even begin to comprehend. His sister has the gift also....hard to believe we are family...I missed out on the "smart" gene, but I more than make up for it in looks..LOL!

This picture was taken last June on a camping trip. It was our afternoon break and they were eating apples and watching a video (how did my Mom camp with four kids in a tent!), we had just gotten back from swimming, it was really hot, so we cooled off in the AC:-) I love the way we camp! Can't wait to go again this year and start creating even more camping memories with them!

Blessings!