Belief Bias:The coke myths

A long day at work, a game of cricket, a movie, a dinner or just a long walk ...the best thing to have by your side would be a tin of coke or pepsi...

But every time we sip it, we see thousands of people waitin to tell us that its injurious to our health...for a miliion reasons...anything they can cook up before u ask why...

These people have an unmistakable knack of misunderstanding things, fooling themselves and workin at their level best to fool others too...

Lets first try to crack one big myth that widespread in the Indian community...its not a myth though...it is true...but the way it is explained to ignorant people by 'experienced and knowledgeable ' persons is utter crap...

"A tooth dissolves in a bottle of coke in (each guy chooses his own span of time) 2 days"

And yea...it has been tried and tested and proved beyond doubt...but why does that happen?..an 'experienced' researcher(who might not even be one) comes on TV and tells u "It contains some toxic chemicals that are capable of dissolving the hardest part of your body....so be careful"

That would be enough to convince the unsuspecting society, makin sure the company runs out of business in no time...hardly any of them would have thought about people who drink a coke everyday and live healthy...No one would wanna know what 'toxic chemicals' the guy is talkin about...the word is just too convincing by itself...

Then a team starts to crack the myth...find the true reason....out of rational thinking...sixth grade chemistrty rather...try to recollect the first of the facts u learnt in chemistry...about acids...
"ALL ACIDS ARE CORROSIVE"
Ring any bells?
The cool drinks we consume are acidic...so naturally corrosive..and sure a tooth wud dissolve in it as it would in a glass of lemonade(a stronger acid...proved) or even a bowl of curd(lactic acid)... The acids produced by our digestive track are far far stronger than lemonade or coke but that's what does our digestion...but why did such researches never reach people?

Here comes the concept of belief bias...
People will tend to accept any and all conclusions that fit in with their systems of belief, without challenge or any deep consideration of what they are actually agreeing with.
People will tend to reject assertions that do not fit in with their belief systems, even though these statements may be perfectly logical and arguably possible.

Coke is too new for the third-world...metal tins had never been a part of their dinner table, a hundred years back...and they don't wanna change their ways....thats why people tested tooth in coke and pepsi but not in lemonade...even if u try to explain it to them, they are not gonna agree...

So if lemonade and curd are perfectly harmless, so is coke...c'mon a huge proportion of out daily diet is acidic in one way or the other..


Then....the recent buzz....COKE + MENTOS= DEATH!

Now, doesn't that sound stupid?
The image u see here is exactly what happens when u drop a couple of mentos candies into a bottle of diet coke...The shower rises to about 6 feet i guess...quite a strange thing to happen...and surely somethin u wouldn't let happen inside your digestive track...but to say that it wud lead to death without anyone actually tryin it real time? And i gues the explanation as per those most learned people in our society would have sounded somethin like "This just goes on to show how damn toxic coke is...see! a 6 foot shower! What more proof does one want?"

I'm sure u'd bet the guy had no idea why it happened...

But there were people who cracked this one too...they call themselves "The Mythbusters" and rightly so...they explain it to be the result of a phenomenon called 'nucleation'

See...if u look at a mentos candy closely(or maybe through a magnifying glass) u wud be able to see that its surface is actually not smooth...its surface contains millions of microscopic pits, which we call here as the 'nucleation sites'...Now..I'm sure u'd be aware of the fact that coke contains dissolved carbondioxide...In each of these pits or nucleation sites, a carbondioxide molecule can change into gas(bubble)...and naturally as they are formed, they escape to the surface...since the surfae of mentos is so pitted, millions of bubbles are formed in a fraction of a second...as the candy sinks down to the bottom of the bottle, all those bubbles(millions of them) tend to rise up and the force causes some of the liquid to rise along with them...as a result...u see somethin like the picture above...

If u dropped a couple of a particular variety of flavoured mentos into coke, u wud find that this shower thing doesn't happen...this is because the flavoured version of the candy has a waxy coating that is smooth and nullifies the possibilities of nucleation sites...

When u have actually eaten(not swallowed) a mentos candy, the nucleation sites(the pits on its surface) get distorted...so if u drink coke after that, nothing will happen because only microscopic pits can enable the liberation of a dissolved carbondioxide molecule...

So the next time u sip a tin of coke or pepsi, i suggest u enjoy the moment rather than thinkin of its possible unpleasant outcomes...coz there'll be none...break the belief bias...