• This experiment makes a great collaborative class activity. Make copies of pages 1 and 2 only for student use. Encourage
students to bring in their favorite beverages for testing—this gives them “ownership” of their experiment and promotes
friendly competition to determine the results of the testing. Try to obtain a variety of non-diet beverages.
• Fructose (“fruit sugar”) is the main sugar present in fruit juices, fruit drinks such as Snapple,® and most carbonated sodas.
For best results, the beverage samples should be at room temperature, as close to 20 °C as possible.
• Table sugar is sucrose, a disaccharide composed of one molecule of fructose joined with one molecule of glucose after loss
of water. Both fructose and sucrose reference solutions were tested in this activity and both gave similar results and accuracy.
• Sports drinks such as Gatorade® are the “exception that proves the rule” in this study. The working assumption in this
experiment is that sugar is the main ingredient whose concentration determines the beverage density. This assumption may
be true for sodas and juices, but not for sports drinks, which contain large amounts of salts such as sodium and potassium
chloride to maintain electrolyte balance.
• Help students see (literally!) the amount of sugar in the beverage by weighing out the amount of sugar shown on the nutritional
label.