Chemistry of Dental Hygiene

Mrs. Spencer, a faculty member at Mott, discussed dental careers and gave us a tour of the Mott Dental Hygiene Clinic labs today. The ladies were able to visit the special mannequin named Dexter, who is made from a real human skull, to take an Xray that they were able to view before moving on to the dental assistant lab where they were able to use dental tools on other mannequin heads and feel how real these fake patients are. This was followed by a lesson on dental hygiene with experiments using eggs as tooth models to test tooth staining, the affects of the acid produced by bacteria that grow when sugar is present, and whitening versus non-whitening toothpaste. Can you guess what kind of results we saw?