So I buy a can of Coke, take a few sips, put it on my dresser, and promptly forget about it for a week. (Hey, I was on vacation!)
Anyway, I get home, notice the can still sitting open, and dump out the contents. Here’s the sick part: Something grey and solid slurps out of the can along with the now stale cola.
What kind of organism grows in carbonated sodas left unattended for days, and just how harmful would it have been to drink it?
I had an argument with a friend about the nature of coca-cola the other day.
The argument was about the presence or absence of a lining inside coke cans (covered also in a straight dope article).
This eventually led to us dialing up the “coke helpline” phone number on the can. They connected us to a “technician”.
The relevance of this is that he told us that once coke is opened it becomes “quite unstable due to certain reactive compounds” in the beverage. Even without the presence of air coke degrades over the course of about a month, but when exposed this would be faster, especially if it were a hot few days.
so the sludge you refer to is probably just some precipitate of the flavourings or sugars in the coke slowly degrading in the acid conditions…
I was impressed with the service though… they were most helpful
there would be few organisms that would grow in coke anyway…
methinks