No Way To Make A Living is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world

I toured the dental lab at the Uni­ver­sity of Essex’s Southend cam­pus, and this set of ‘prac­tice teeth’ caught my eye.

Before stu­dents are allowed to touch a patient, they get a set of false teeth caked in fake plaque to hone their scrap­ing tech­nique on. I thought that the hard part would be deal­ing with the teeth at their dirti­est, but it turns out that scrap­ing is more of a chal­lenge as the teeth get cleaner. This means that the stu­dents start with few skills but an easy task. Who makes these dirty fake teeth?