this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Some kids in my family start losing their milk teeth. 🦷

While we don’t do the tooth fairy 🧚 stuff, I wondered whether there’s any cool kid-friendly experiments 🔬 to do with their deciduous teeth? Like dissolving them in easily available liquids to teach them the importance of brushing, or maybe some material strength tests to show how cool enamel is?

Hit me with some cool ideas, I‘ve got a few teeth to experiment with 😃

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[–] GrammatonCleric 96 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

...milk teeth?

To clarify, I'm American, and always heard them called baby teeth 😅

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Aka baby teeth or primary teeth or deciduous teeth

[–] dojan 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] cheese_greater 4 points 1 year ago

Watch ur mouth, boy

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Ope, jinx. Just adding that to my comment when you commented. 🍻

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's what we call them in German. Milchzähne. I'm guessing because they develop while you're still drinking your mother's milk?

[–] cheese_greater 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Do you have a deutschyy94 companion novelty account? Should snipe that, like nowzers

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

in estonian the litteral translation is milk teeth and for the teeth in adulthood it's ice teeth

[–] Soku 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not ice teeth, 'jäävhambad' means permanent teeth. The root word 'jääma', meaning to stay

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

i guess as a child i always heard it as jäähambad

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In france we call em dent de lait, milk teeth

[–] cheese_greater 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

When is milk stuff like de lait?

Edit: de lait vs du lait

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Same in Spanish, dientes de leche

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that not what you call them?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

baby teeth: this will probably differ in what they are called by province / state / country

[–] MigratingtoLemmy 12 points 1 year ago

Lol, Americans are different. Everyone else in this thread calls them milk teeth, even in different languages haha!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's like our egg tooth but for humans, it's their first set of teeth. They aren't breaking out of their eggs though, lazy mammals.

[–] GrammatonCleric 6 points 1 year ago

Oh BABY teeth!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Milk teeth is grossing me out. I am just imagining me pouring milk and teeth are mixed in with the milk.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Like extra crunchy breakfast cereal.

[–] cheese_greater 4 points 1 year ago

Are you ok? Are you worried about a silicon condom + silicon lube type situation?

[–] cheese_greater 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Its what you use to eat milksteak 🙄

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Milk teeth in Norwegian as well, "melketenner"

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago

It's great segway to discuss aging, decay and the certain death that awaits them. Or you can do the fairy stuff sure

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you save up enough, you can have them in a bowl with milk, like teeth cereal.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Thompson's Teeth. The only teeth strong enough to eat other teeth.

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[–] humdrumgentleman 36 points 1 year ago (4 children)

You know how this goes, right?

The resulting thirst for scientific knowledge results in unparalleled technological advancement, but also an endless demand deciduous teeth for further experimentation. Eventually their personally-developed, secretly manufactured and deployed microdrone monitoring network alerts them every time any child loses a tooth in the Western world. Slightly larger drones sneak into the home and collect the tooth. In an attempt to avoid further pressing of ethical boundaries, the drones are equipped to carry in small amounts of currency that are left in place of the tooth. Your family, more literally and on a larger scale than any family before, DOES the tooth fairy 🧚 stuff.

[–] cheese_greater 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nice try, James Cameron

[–] cheese_greater 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Love that you intrgrated "thirst" into your overture there :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have suggested using baby teeth as a novel piezoelectric material. If juvenile biomineralogical apatite turns out to be a better material to make crystal oscillators than quartz, I've literally just created industrial demand for the bones of children.

Oh well. Cat is out of the bag now. Turned out not to be an effective or humane way to store cats anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Digital microscopes are very affordable. Basic models up to 1000x can be found for 50 USD.

Break one up and look at the different layers under magnification.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Lol, 1000x is such bullshit. It’s hopelessly stacked digital zoom or idiotic lens measurements. 1000x is about the absolute maximum with classic light microscopes and those that can do it are quite expensive. Buy some cheap (stereo)microscope for $100 from some company like amscope (maybe used) and it will be much better and be useful for other stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

what you can do is hide the teeth under a neighbor kits pillow and leave a note on the door for the parents, then when they leave the money you go back in and take it before the parents find out, just watch out for the local tooth mob boss

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Well, I've been tempted to cut them in thin slivers, press them between metal plates, and test for piezoelectricity (they ought to be piezoelectric). Them build a higher-than-normal voltage Colpitts oscillator around it. Higher voltage to compensate for lousy crystal performance, not "high voltage". Maybe tens of volts?

Then use them as a clock source for a CPU. Try to get one with fully static operation in case the frequency is not super stable.

This forms a good introduction to practical necromancy and necrocomputing for children. Happy Halloween!

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

One of the most infamous experiments is submerging the tooth in cola, to show the importance of brushing. In primary school, it was done on white eggs though, but using a tooth would be more authentic. Ironically, while the tooth should completely rot in cola, the liquid is perfect for washing household things (the sink or a toilet bowl for example).

[–] PetDinosaurs 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That's always been a pretty misleading interpretation of the experiment.

The experiment is great. It's good to teach kids about acids and bases and this basic chemistry.

It's just that the same thing happens if you put a dead tooth in any acid, including the ones that are required for you to live, like vitamin c, and the ones that people drink because they think it's healthy, like vinegar.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does it really? I tried that with some meat when I was a kid, and other than turning a little ugly not much changed.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

If they haven't been brushing their teeth and there's visible calculus on them, you could use a metal pick and scrape it off like a dentist doing teeth cleaning, to show them how thick it is.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Another experiment (with Halloween coming up) might be to string those teeth up as a necklace and observe the reactions of people noticing it…

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The first thing that comes to my mind is to polish them like rocks.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Teeth in a tumbler could be anything from a kids story to the next Stephen King novel.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

crunchy kitty meme comes to mind

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