How much does the living tissue weigh in a fully developed wisdom tooth?

August 7, 2008 12:12 PM

How much does the living tissue weigh in a fully developed wisdom tooth?
posted by Null Pointer and the Exceptions to health & fitness (4 comments total)

From this patent application:

Depending on the type of tooth, a tooth weighs approximately between 0.510 g and 2,280 g and a front tooth weighs approximately 1,1277-1,1526 g and is in the studies determined in values of 1/1,000.000 g.

The patent is apparently for some trick of dental forensics.

It looks like the OCR software confused commas and decimals? A couple grams sounds reasonable.

I googled for ["a tooth weighs"].
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 1:09 PM on August 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

That's exactly the sort of info I'm looking for. However the enamel is not considered living tissue, so I need some more details.
posted by Null Pointer and the Exceptions at 1:24 PM on August 7, 2008

There's no constant answer to your question; it depends on the person and in particular on how old they are. As you get older, your body continues to plate the inside of the tooth with calcium, and in an old person there's almost no "living tissue" left, in the sense that you're talking about.
posted by Class Goat at 1:32 PM on August 7, 2008

This abstract has some results for pulp weight of premolars, so at least you can get an idea of the order of magnitude.
posted by greatgefilte at 2:03 PM on August 7, 2008