Why does cola go flat

Carbonic Acid is the reason why sodas are so damaging to your teeth. When this Carbon Dioxide is turned into its gas form it rises to the surface of the liquid. These bubbles rise to the top and are released into the atmosphere.

Carbon Dioxide is found naturally among us in the atmosphere and when these gases reach the top of the liquid they escape to their most desired and natural state. Some people believe that soft drinks, more specifically flat soda, can be used for a few medicinal purposes. From curing the worst cases of upset stomachs, to easing headaches. Since the first-ever soda was released it has long and often been believed that a cola will be a near-instant feel better medicine.

A research study was recently reported on by the New York Times. Choosing to go with a soda regularly is undoubtedly raising your health risks and over an extended period of time going to clearly affect your life physically at the least. Weight gain , diabetes, change in lab results, troubled skin, and decaying teeth are just a handful of examples of how adversely sodas impact our bodies and lives. These dates are essentially a best if enjoyed before date. And while all sodas feature one of these dates all sodas do not go flat at the same speed.

The brand of sodas differs in degassing speeds for a number of reasons. No two reasons may be as important and critical to the preservation of carbonation level in a drink than these two things. And Temperature. You end up doing the exact opposite of the fizz pumper cap. More pressure, more fizzy the drink stays. Fizz pump Less pressure, the CO2 escapes, soda less fizzy.

Keep it cold. Keep it capped. Don't squeeze the bottle. Don't stand on your head. Don't pray to goofy idols. Check out gas laws on Khan Academy if you want to know the facts. That said, the gas wants to escape the liquid that it is trapped in.

If it has room, it WILL escape. Squeezing the bottle only gives it more room to expand, therefore leaving the liquid Leaving the liquid flat. Temperature plays a big part on whether or not a gas stays or leaves. You do the math, a warmer gas expands and elevates, a colder gas contracts and stays. You will actually make the soda worse by using a "fizz saver" gadget that pumps air into the bottle, such as the illustrated "Fizz Keeper" cap.

This is exactly because of the "partial pressure" reason mentioned later in the article. There are many soda bottle "dispenser cap" gadgets available which do not let outside air into the bottle while they pour the liquid out. Try using those.

I have found it helpful to screw the cap back on tightly once you have taken out some soda to drink and shake the bottle vigorously. Put back in refrig. The bottle becomes very hard so its seems like a vacuum seal. Of course I wouldnt do this if someone was coming back in 5 minutes to reopen. But I have never had it explode o n me and it seems "fizzier" and fresher this way.

Soda bottle caps are designed not reseal tightly once the cap seal ring is broken upon opening, so they will go flat. If you buy o-rings the same diameter as the inside of the cap, put one inside the cap, squeeze the air space out of the bottle, and screw down the cap tightly, the soda will be fizee a very long time.

The "fizz keeper" which pumps air into the drink bottle will NOT increase the carbonation of the soda. It is a hoax. Henry's law states that the amount of dissolved gas in a solution is a function of the partial pressure of THAT gas above the liquid. Crushing the bottle is probably the worst thing you can do, unless you clamp it or something like that to keep it from inflating back to its original size, try to crush a soda bottle and take time lapse photos of it and see how the bottle inflates back to its original size by the gas from the drink.

Also, closing the cap as tightly as you can is not very helpful, you only need to close it as tight as it was closed when it was still sealed this tightness holds up the gas usually much longer than the bottle will be in your fridge , closing the cap very tightly only ruins the gasket and making it less efficient and will result in unwanted gas loss. The only thing that will efficiently sustain the gas in the drink is a pressurized environment, you can achieve that by either compressing gas back to the bottle, or moving the drink to a smaller container, a process which is not that recommended for it causes gas loss as well.

If you close the soda bottles too tightly everyone will hate you for it and your soda will still go flat! I appreciate the equations, but they don't care. These people are just looking for the answer. I think you've summed it up quite eloquently but I don't think they got it.

There's a world of difference between knowing the answer and being able to explain the situation to achieve the intended goal. The carbonation in soft drinks is a result of additional carbon dioxide being dissolved into the liquid, which is then sealed under pressure. When the container is opened, the difference in pressure allows the carbon dioxide to form into bubbles, which then rush to the surface and escape back into the air. As each bubble bursts, the drink becomes a little less fizzy.

This process can theoretically continue until the drink contains the same amount of carbon dioxide as the atmosphere around it—though the drink will seem flat long before that point.

The answer: Not really. While it's true that a bottle that is lying down will have a greater area of contact between the liquid and the air inside the bottle, that's a small enough factor that any effect on the speed of carbon dioxide dissolution will be negligible.

Since carbon dioxide bubbles form, or "nucleate," on the side of the bottle, increasing the surface area between the drink and the air might actually make it go flat slightly slower if the bottle is on its side—but again, this effect isn't pronounced enough to make much of a difference over anything other than very short time scales.

What really matters when it comes to keeping a drink fizzy is the pressure inside a sealed container. As the carbon dioxide escapes, it builds up the pressure in the air within the bottle, until it's high enough to prevent bubbles forming, which keeps the liquid fizzy.