Lorraine Aust, age 15, of Long Island City, N.Y.., for her question:
How is the fizz put into carbonated drinks?
Cola or soda, pop or fizz one is as welcome as another on a seething summer day. A soda pop may fizz with this or that refreshing flavor but there will be no soda among the ingredients. Standard soda water is a mixture of water and carbon dioxide which is the waste gas we breathe out of our lungs.
Nature has been producing fizz water since time began. It pours from the earth in the mineral springs of vichy, france, and seltza, germany. In america we are supplied with nature's soda water by the mineral springs of sarasota, n.y.,, and manitou springs, colo. stae 200 years ago, a british chemist tried to copy the mineral waters of france. He used a form of soda, in his recipe and we still call.. The fizzy stuff soda water.
The bulk of a fizzy soft drink is soda water though nowadays, no soda of arty sort is used in the recipe. The basic item is water clean, clear, distilled water. The sparkling ingredient is carbon dioxide. This is the waste gas given off by swamps, animals and decaying materials. It is also the gas plants use in photosynthesis a process in which they make their basic sugar aad return life giving oxygen to the air.
In nature, carbon dioxide is always ready to dissolve in water. Quantities of carbon dioxide in certain rocks dissolve in underground streams, and later the water bubbles forth as a mineral spring. The gas is held suspended in the water under pressure. Out in the air, the pressure is released, and the captured gas comes up in sparkling bubbles.
In a soft drink plant, carbon diaxide gas is forced into the distilled water under presbure equal t0 seyeral atmosphetes. If the mixture is capped in a bottle or se8led in a can, the gas in the water remains invisible. But when the bottle or can is operied, the pressure 1s released and the gas rushes up to the surface. We say that fizz water is charged with carbon dioxide. When you drink it, it tingles and tickles your tongue with a swarm of gasy bubbles of carbon dioxide.
Manufactured soda water is kept under pressure equal to several atmospheres inside steel tanks. When needed, it is added to a mixture of sugar and flavoring and the brew is tightly sealed until you are ready for that fizzy drink of bubbling soda, which is not soda at all.
We say that soda water is charged with carbon dioxide, and charged water is used to make a multitude of different cooling drinks. In america, it is estimated, we drink almost 200 bottles or cans of fizz zaater apiece throughout the year. We spend, so they estimate, more than $1 billion a year on our bubbly soft drinks.