(classical music)
(chalk scraping)
- Hey everybody, it's me Ben.
Today's question is why is it so painful
to bite into aluminum foil?
Alright, good question.
First thing's first,
it's not painful for everybody.
It's painful for people
who have fillings or crowns made of metal.
You probably already knew that part
so let's fast forward.
What's actually happening here?
It's sort of like making a battery.
(dramatic music)
So how does this happen exactly?
Well first, it's two different metals,
the aluminum foil and the
metal in your filling or crown,
they have what's called
an electrochemical potential difference,
they create sort of this voltage
and the environment of your mouth,
a moist, salty environment
produced by your saliva,
is perfect for these two things
to come in contact this way
and to transmit this energy.
The electrical stimulation
from this bootleg
battery you have created,
is hitting the nerve in your tooth
and that is producing
that weird, unique pain.
The production of this current
between the contact of
two dissimilar metals
is actually a pretty old concept.
It's called the voltaic effect.
It's name after a guy
named Alessandro Volta
who most people credit
with discovering it.
He was making extra
batteries, a long time ago,
and he stacked these
dissimilar metals together
and in between them he put water paper
soaked with salt water
and he found that by doing this,
he could create a very low power battery.
So that's it, that's what's happening
when you're opening a candy bar,
you bite down on a piece of chocolate
that still has a little bit of foil in it
and you freak out because it's painful.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
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