A Study of Birefringence in Sweeteners and the correlation with metabolic processes and reactions in teeth

It is known that optically active substances rotate the plane of polarization of linearly polarized light. A sugar crystal or solution are optically active. This investigation proposes the study of optical activity in different artificial sweeteners in order to find a relationship between physical and biochemical properties. A preliminary study allowed us to find optical activity in various commercial beverages whose composition includes sweeteners. This raises several questions regarding the purpose and effect of sweeteners in the body, which leads us to propose an interdisciplinary study to solve those questions. Currently, various academic and health institutions are conducting studies with similar objectives. For this, we propose to build a polarimeter illuminated with HeNe laser (532nm) and develop software to streamline the process of detecting light and clearly understand the birefringence effect of the various sweeteners. It also intended to study the biochemical effects in the metabolism of sweeteners. The project is an interdisciplinary work between the School of Engineering and the School of Health Sciences. This project will promote the formation of a research group in biomedical engineering