Mouth Temperature vs. Gum Types : Does it feel or is it real?






 

 

     

 

                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

My project looked at the affect of four types of gum (hot, cold, sour and sweet) on your mouth temperature.  I checked to see if the a person could tell the gums apart by taste alone and if there was any real affect on the temperature of your mouth after chewing the four gums.
 

My Hypothesis Was

My hypothesis was that I think that the types of gum will not affect the temperature of your mouth, because I think it will just affect your taste buds.
 
Discussion and Conclusions

Now that I have completed my experiments I can tell you that my hypothesis was wrong.  As you can see in figure one below there was an affect of the different types of gums on mouth temperature when I compared it to chewing with no gum.

Experiment 1

The results of the gum blind taste test showed that, most of the time, a subject could tell if the gum was hot, cold, sweet or sour correctly. See Table 3. In only two test out of the sixteen were the test subjects incorrect. This shows that people can tell the type of gum they are chewing just by the flavour.

Experiment 2



My graph (Figure 1) of mouth temperature after chewing the four gum types shows a difference in mouth temperature between gum types. I found out that the hot chewing gum had the highest mouth temperatures when compared with the other chewing gum types and the mouth temperature after chewing with no gum. All three other gums (Sweet, Sour and Ice) showed a slightly lower mouth temperature when compared to the mouth temperature after chewing with no gum.

There was not much difference in temperature between the sweet, sour and cold chewing gums.

My hypothesis is was wrong and the type of gum did have an effect on your mouth temperature. The Fire gum did raise the mouth temperature and the Ice gum did make your mouth colder, but so did the sweet and sour gums.

I found out that gum is not only about taste, it does affect your mouth temperature and the bacteria in your mouth.
If we were to do this experiment again I  would probably repeat each gum test about 3 or four times and I might try some different groups of people such as kids and adults and people who smoke to see if they taste differently.
Thank you for taking the time to read my
science fair project.
 
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