Scientific reason it's impossible to drink a fizzy drink with a paper straw

It's frustrating to admit considering the environmental benefits over plastic alternatives, but nobody really likes paper straws and there's a myriad of reasons why you'd rather opt for something else when enjoying your favorite beverages.

They're especially bad for fizzy drinks though, and there's a good chance you've been left frustrated at a restaurant or fast food place as it simply doesn't work in the way that you'd want.

Outside of the general feeling of drinking through a plastic straw and the speed at which it can easily disintegrate, there's actually a scientific explanation why they're so much worse for carbonated drinks than plastic or metal straws, and it's not for the reason you might expect.

Renowned mathematician Hannah Fry, the current Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, has outlined this phenomenon on her YouTube channel, and it's taken many people by surprise.

To begin you must understand how fizzy drinks work, and it revolves around the combination of carbon dioxide and the water within the bottle, resulting in the creation of a whole new molecule: carbonic acid.

Unfortunately, carbonic acid is incredibly unstable and is always looking for ways to separate into its two original forms, yet it can only do this when it gets a 'nucleation site' to latch onto.

This is typically confined to little pockets of air, but plastic straws – being completely smooth – lack these and therefore don't allow the carbonic acid to split back into carbon dioxide.

The same can't be said for paper straws, however, which amounts to a 'jagged, fibrous canyon' according to Fry, featuring millions of microscopic craters that the carbon dioxide can escape onto.

The jagged nature of paper straws creates millions of tiny air pockets the carbon dioxide can escape to, causing it to explode (Getty Stock)

Plunging your paper straw into a fizzy drink then sees the gas transform into bubbles and rush to the surface, causing the drink to 'explode' in the same way you'd see by dropping Mentos into the beverage.

It's not just a complete mess that this causes either, as it actually makes the drink taste worse by removing the carbonic acid that gives fizzy drinks like Coke their signature 'bright' flavour, so it's all around something that you should want to avoid wherever possible.

That doesn't mean switching back to single-use plastics though, as you can instead opt for a reusable metal straw that has the same benefits of the plastic one but without any of the harmful environmental damage — and it looks pretty cool too.