1) The document describes a science experiment to determine which of four toothpaste brands (Median, Perioe, Dentiste, Clinx) is most effective at preventing tooth decay. Teeth were brushed with each brand and then soaked in Coke to measure the change in mass. 2) The results showed the Median toothpaste had the smallest change in mass, supporting the hypothesis that the toothpaste with the most fluoride protects teeth best. 3) The document reflects on what was learned from planning and conducting the experiment, and how the project process helped develop skills as an IB learner through inquiry, research, and reflection.

1. Aim : To find the best toothpaste brand (Among our 4 toothpaste brands.)
Hypothesis : The toothpaste which has the most fluoride will protect the
teeth from decay the most. (will not make the teeth lose its weight )
Variables : Independent variable : toothpaste brand
Dependent variable : mass of teeth
Control variable : brushing time, size of beaker, amount of coke, etc
Apparatus (Equipment list) : 4 different toothpaste brands (Median, Perioe,
Dentiste, Clinx), 6 beakers, 1 toothbrush, 6 petri dishes, bottle of bleach,
1.8L of coke, 1 balance
Why did we chose this experiment? :
Why did I chose this experiment
Every time, when I was in the market to
buy my toothpaste, I was always curious
what toothpaste is the most effective for
my teeth. For this reason I always spent a
long time to buy my toothpaste. So, I
asked to my mother and my mother
answered the toothpaste that has the
most fluorine will protect your teeth the
most. However, I want to find out by real

2. *
1. Prepare all the
equipments that we need.
5. Brush
(cover) the 4 teeth with different
toothpaste bands (perioe, clinx, dentinste,
median). (one other teeth shouldn’t be
brushed)
2. Soak animal teeth in the Bleach
to make it clean for 10 minutes.
3. Measure the each mass of teeth.
4. Pour 150mlof coke in each beaker.
Tip! Put same
amount of
toothpaste on each
teeth!
ANOTHER TIP!
Brush the teeth for same
time! ( we did for 1 minute
each)

3. *
7. Then, soak all the teeth in to the coke.( one
that has no toothpaste and other 4 teeth that
has toothpaste on it.
8. Wait for 23 ~ 24 hour. ( We started on 3/
12 10: 30 A:M and check result on 3/ 13 9 :
30 A:M)
9. Check the mass of each teeth
and record or take a photo of the
results.

4. *
TOOTHPASTE
BRAND
Mass Before
brushing(g)
MassAfter
Itsoaked(g)
Mass change (g)
2.47 2.04 0.43
2.62 2.48 0.14
2.31 2.26 0.05
1.81 1.73 0.08
2.6 2.09 0.51

5. *
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
Dentiste Perioe Median Clinx No toothpaste
Mass(g)
Toothpaste Brand
Bar chart showing the change in mass of teeth
Mass Before (g)
Mass after (g)

6. *
*As you can see from the charts, the tooth which had the smallest
mass change was the ‘Median’ tooth (0.5 g) and the tooth which had
the largest mass change was the ‘ no toothpaste’ tooth (0.521). The
Clinx tooth had the second smallest mass change (0.08) and then it
was the perioe teeth (0.14) and the dentiste tooth had the fourth
smallest mass change(0.43). For this reason our hypothesis {“The
toothpaste which has the most fluoride will protect the teeth from
decay the most. (will not make the teeth lose its mass)} is correct
that Median which had the biggest amount of fluoride had the
smallest mass change.
* Fluoride protects the teeth by going into cells to be used for
building stronger enamel. Hence, it takes part in the tooth enamel
and it blocks more acid than before. I believe that median teeth also
went through the same process and that’s why it only made a small
decrease in the mass of the teeth.

7. *
* By our science project we learned lots of priceless things. First of
all, we learned how could we manage time effectively. Before we’ve
done this project, we knew that we had some problems in managing
time. For this reason we had to hurry up because we leave our
homework until the due-date. However, the reason is because we
prepared enough time for this project, we could work step-by-step
without being hurry. Moreover, we learned how to conduct research and
experiment. As we said before, we both haven’t done this kind of
project before and that’s why we felt tough and tired. We didn’t even
know what steps do we have to finish and what should be included in
the plan for our experiment. Now, we found out how can we plan and
what is necessary for preparing the experiment. The most important
factor for successful experiment was the ‘planning’. Without well-
organized planning, it was hard to do fair test or get correct results.
Also, doing background research was one of the significant keys for the
project. If we do not have knowledge about our experiment we might
feel confused during the process of doing experiment or creating a
poster. Background research also helped us a lot to gain valuable
knowledge. For us, we discovered risks and benefits of fluoride, types of
toothpaste, ingredients of toothpaste, etc. Furthermore, we learned
how to divide the work and how to cooperate well. Sometimes
teamwork is difficult, but we realized that teamwork makes better
result because we can share and help each other.

8. *There are some things that we want to improve in our project and
what do we want to do better in next time. To begin with, we want to
plan more specifically. We rushed and be confused during the process
of doing experiment because there were few problems in our method
that we didn’t write down step 2 and 3 on our plan. We forgot to
measure the mass of each tooth before we soak because we didn’t
planned in detail. In addition, unexpected problem occurred that all 5
teeth absorbed the coke so the massincreased. For this reason, we
had to dry these for long time. If we have chance to improve our
experiment, we want to think about possible problems that might
happen before we start the experiment.
*Of course, this project required lots of time and effort to us.
Hence, at the first we were so exhausted and sometimes we really
wanted to give up everything. However, we soon felt that this project
is truly magical that if we try more and more, we became more and
more enthusiastic. This helped us to stand up and go through all
problems that we met during this project. We also felt that this
project helps us to grow our knowledge more than just having a lesson
or reading a book because it requires us to find out and realize by
ourselves. Moreover, we felt grateful towards this project that it
reminded us importance of our teeth health.

9. * Through this project, we automatically learnt how to be an
IB learner. We learned how to be an ‘inquirer’ by thinking
deeply and solving our curiosity by experience. We
researched about how does teeth forms and how does
fluoride works to consider about our experiment in detail. As
I mentioned earlier, we became more knowledgeable in
science that we got plenty of knowledge about our teeth
health. We didn’t gain knowledge just for the hypothesis; we
gained other general knowledge about teeth such as cause of
tooth decay or ways to keep our teeth health by background
research too. We also learned how to be principled that we
respected other people’s post or news by adding reference in
the research or the pictures. Finally, the most important
profile that we learned is being ‘REFLECTIVE’. By being
reflective, we could develop ourselves and improve our
project by finding flaws in it.