Have you ever thought about your ability to differentiate between the Coke flavors? Many students in the Advanced Journalism 3-4 class stated they thought they could blindly tell the difference between Vanilla, Cherry, Diet, Zero, and regular Coca-Cola, so we decided to put it to the test.
In order to test this, Senior Trent Acedillo worked with Mr. Campbell to mix up the flavors in front of the Eagle Eye staff members. 5 cups were filled with a portion of each soda variation, labeled with numbers. The cups were lined up in front of the 12 participants, and they were instructed to taste test the different flavors and input their answers into a Google Form.
The results were as follows: Senior Riley Maynard, Senior Joey Diaz, Junior Anah Khan and English/Journalism teacher Mr. Campbell all received the highest score of 3 for 5! Maynard was close to a perfect score, but second-guessed himself last minute and took the tie.
“I think it was pretty good, it was really fun to do something out of the normal like that. School’s pretty boring, but this class makes it a little interesting, gives me a reason to show up, you know? I think I would’ve done a little better. I didn’t do as well as i thought, but yeah, it was really fun!” says Senior Jameson Webb.
Joey Diaz, a Senior, stated “I felt confident and frankly, given more time, I would have got them all right. Some of the organizers of the process were a little biased and didn’t give me enough time. I think it was biased, but that’s just my opinion.”
When Diaz submitted his form, Mr. Campbell declared that he had gotten a perfect score. As expected, Diaz clapped his hands and yelled, “Let’s go!”, but his bubble was promptly burst by a flustered Acedillo, who got everyone under control and explained that Diaz had actually gotten 3/5.
When asked about his false victory announcement, Diaz replied, “I felt cheated. I felt robbed…it felt like a practical joke had been played on me”.
Enochs High School Senior, Zulaika Takahashi explains, “I felt like it wasn’t easy. Yes, because I could taste the difference, but I got it wrong, which is a mistake on their part.”
Senior Trent Acedillo describes how he felt setting up and documenting the whole experience.
“It was kinda funny, because everyone was confident, but no one got them all right. I thought it was interesting because people kept getting ones that were similar to each other,” Acedillo elaborated.
In the end, the whole experience was really good for the morale of our class, it promoted team bonding, and we got to drink soda, which is always a plus. Check out the video below that summarizes the whole experiment.
