Re: What is inside a tooth that has been pulled out of your mouth?

Dear Sheena,

The tooth is completely different from an eggshell. The tooth has three calcified structures: enamel (96% calcified material = calcium hydroxy apatite, 4 % organic material), dentin (65% calcified material = calcium hydroxy apatite, 35% organic material), and cementum (50% calcified material = calcium hydroxy apatite and 50% organic material). Dentin is located on the inside and enamel and cementum cover dentin. Enamel is located in the crown (the part of the tooth you see when someone smiles at you) and cementum covers the dentin of the root (which you see only after the tooth has be extracted). The dentin of the tooth is hollow and this space is known as the pulp cavity. The portion of the pulp cavity that it in the crown is known as the pulp chamber and the region of the pulp cavity that is in the root is known as the root canal. The pulp cavity houses a soft, gelatinous tissue with lots of blood vessels and nerve fibers. This tissue is known as the pulp.

The egg shell is made up of a hard outer shell composed of calcium carbonate and a soft inner shell (a thin membrane that you sometimes see when you crack a hard boiled egg. The contents of the shell is composed of three layers of albumin (which you can sometimes see when you peel a hard boiled egg and gently tease the egg white apart) and the yellow, or yolk of the egg. The yolk is really nothing else but a single, very large cell, most of which is occuoied by a nonliving nutritive substance known as the yolk.

So, this is the difference between a tooth and an egg (in a nut shell and please smile because that was a yolk).

I hope this helps.

Leslie P. Gartner, Ph.D
Associate Professor of Anatomy
Dental School University of Maryland
Baltimore, Maryland