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 😃
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!
Wow, calcium phosphate is piezoelectric? Good to know in case I can’t find quartz for some reason.
Bone is piezoelectric – not sure if this is due to structure or because apatite is also piezoelectric.
Some practical notes:
I haven’t been able to use it in crystal oscillators at 5V and a naive setup (a standard hex inverter crystal oscillator circuit). Probably I’ll need to use proper thin sections of it (to increase the electric field per mm), increase the voltage (e.g. 20V), and maybe stress it in the right direction (bone has a ‘grain’ to it).
Also : Fee fi fo fum. I’ll grind some bones to make my… breadboards?