GREENSBORO, NC -- It's said one in five Americans drinks at least one soda a day. And with North Carolina being the home of Cheerwine and Pepsi, I bet the stats are higher -- which brings us to this Kids Want to Know question.
Abigail wants to know "How do they make the fizz in soda and how do they get it in the can or bottle?"
The three main ingredients in soda pop - water, syrup and carbon dioxide gas. The gas makes the fizz, but how do they get it in your drink? We asked Dr. Keith Harris from the Food, Bioprocessing, and Nutrition Sciences Department at NC State.
"So I have a soda, and we're going to talk about why sodas have bubbles in them - why they have carbonation.
One of the things you need to understand first is the idea of how you make a solution. So you know if I pour a little bit of salt into water, and I stir it around that we're going to eventually see that salt disappear. Were going to make a solution out of it right?
Now what happens with carbonation is - instead of taking solids like sugar or salt - what we do is we take a gas and we push that gas into a liquid under pressure. Under lots of pressure. And we hold that pressure in a bottle.
So in the bottle, you don't see any bubbles forming until we decide to let off the pressure. When we do that we see something which is kind of fun - soda spewing out of the top.
So all those bubbles, all those bubbles coming out are a result of us letting off the pressure. That gas comes back out and we see it as small bubbles. These are carbon dioxide or CO2 bubbles. This is why we call it carbonation."
