The Titanic of Soft Drinks

Learned some interesting info today during a Web search. Joel Achenbach of Washington Post fame explains how a can of Diet Coke floats in water, while a can of regular Coke sinks.

Wha-what?! Am I living in the Stone Age here? I never knew this. The wonders of diet soda never seem to cease…

So how does this seemingly miraculous event occur? Why I’m glad you asked! Allow me to share in Achenbach’s words:

“Not since Galileo dropped weights off the Leaning Tower of Pisa has an experiment proven so brilliant. Yes, the Diet Coke bobs right to the surface. Definitely the more buoyant of the two. We must note, though, that the Classic didn't exactly sink. It seemed to have trouble making up its mind whether it could float. (No doubt both cans were buoyed by the air pocket inside).

“The explanation from Coca-Cola: Diet Coke contains aspartame, which is less dense than sugar and also much sweeter, so less is needed. We would imagine that the second half of that is what really matters here. Aspartame is 200 times sweeter than sugar; if it takes 9 teaspoons of sugar (sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup) to sweeten a Coke, then it takes less than a 20th of a teaspoon of aspartame. Check out the ingredient label: There's less sweetener in a Diet Coke than there is caramel coloring. So the dissolved sugar make Classic denser than either water or Diet Coke. But if you drop both cans off a building simultaneously, they hit the ground at the same time. We'll take Galileo's word for it."

I’m going straight home and whipping out the old chemistry set and doing an experiment of my own! And by chemistry set, I mean a diet soft drink. And by “experiment,” I mean I’ll drink it. I just love science!