It's the Diet Coke and Mentos show...

[LeeH]

If the fountains at the Bellagio ever go down they can bring in these guys as a replacement...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-197826019194600575

[M.D. Holloway]

and on Friday I pulled into my driveway to witness my two Kid and Wife dumping Fruit mentos into a can of diet coke.

"Sweetheart, I think you have to use the mint flavored ones and a liter bottle...but I could be mistaken."

"The store was all out of the mint ones."

"This was on TV today wasn't it?"

"Ya..."

3 diet Cokes and a few packages of mentos later they still couldn't get it to erupt.

[David]

We tried it at work last week. We used a 2 liter diet coke with a 1/4" hole in the cap with 4 mentos. It sprayed about 15 feet in the air. Pretty cool.

[ronin]

how much time did you have to screw the cap back on before the big eruption?

[air-cool-me]

none.... pretty much happens right away..

[svandamme]

Originally posted by air-cool-me
none.... pretty much happens right away..

wrap it ( enough paper so it delays but not to much either )
dunk it in the bottle
then close the cap
run.


or stuff the mentos with some additional stuffing in the neck of the bottle, close the cap, then shake or kick the bottle..so it get's wet..
run.

personally , i prefer booms with fire and smoke
the diet/menthos thing is just well, yeah , diet...

[David]

We drilled holes in the mentos and hung them through the hole we drilled in the coke cap. We screwed on the cap and let go of the string holding them over the diet coke. The eruption was almost instantaneous.

[widgeon13]

For immature adult entertainment, I'll take a potato gun powered by hair spray any day, but that is a close second. They probably played with their own shlt in the crib when they were baby's, you know smearing it on the wall, I was good at that myself. At least that's what my mother tells me. She's been trying to get me back ever sense.

[ronin]

Originally posted by 125shifter
We drilled holes in the mentos and hung them through the hole we drilled in the coke cap. We screwed on the cap and let go of the string holding them over the diet coke. The eruption was almost instantaneous.

ahaaaa. the act of simply dumping the Mentos in the bottle and then trying to screw the cap back on had me seeing visions akin to trying to put the cork back in the monkey's ass. (remember that old joke?)

[M.D. Holloway]

Tell it again for those of us that were out that day...

[ronin]

if I could only remember it...

they say memory is the second thing to go

[mikester]

Seriously...I tried this yesterday with a 2-liter that I had no intention of drinking. I intended to put 4 mentos in but before I had 2 in it was erupting twice as tall as I am. What the heck causes it (I mean besides just dropping the mentos in)?

[Don Plumley]

I just did this no more than 30 minutes ago down on the dock! I rigged up a plastic sleeve to rapidly introduce 10 mentos after pulling out a shim. Great fun.

[nostatic]

I improvised a trigger mechanism for releasing metallic sodium under water. 5 gallon plastic pickle bucket, metallic sodium shavings (maximize surface area but work quickly because it oxidizes) in a pile on the bottom, then place a baby food jar over the top, followed by a brick on top of that (to capture the air pocket over the sodium). Fill the bucket with water, step back 20 paces, blast shield down, and roll a bolling ball towards the IED. Hit it with just enough force to rock the bucket, knocking the brick off. Viola....kablammo.

[M.D. Holloway]

Todd - and where would the ave citizen get sodium shavings?

[M.D. Holloway]

Originally posted by mikester
...What the heck causes it (I mean besides just dropping the mentos in)?

OK - here is something I grabbed from the internet. It is pretty good, long but good (wait, I heard that Monday night!):

Here's the question of the day... Why do Mentos mixed with soda produce this incredible eruption? You should know that there is considerable debate over how and why this works. While we offer the most probable explanations below, we also understand and admit that other explanation could be possible... and we welcome your thoughts.

As you probably know, soda pop is basically sugar (or diet sweetener), flavoring, water and preservatives. The thing that makes soda bubbly is invisible carbon dioxide gas, which is pumped into bottles at the bottling factory using tons of pressure. Until you open the bottle and pour a glass of soda, the gas mostly stays suspended in the liquid and cannot expand to form more bubbles, which gases naturally do. But there's more...

If you shake the bottle and then open it, the gas is released from the protective hold of the water molecules and escapes with a whoosh, taking some of the soda along with it. What other ways can you cause the gas to escape? Just drop something into a glass of soda and notice how bubbles immediately form on the surface of the object. For example, adding salt to soda causes it to foam up because thousands of little bubbles form on the surface of each grain of salt.

Many scientists, including Lee Marek, claim that the Mentos phenomenon is a physical reaction, not a chemical one. Water molecules strongly attract each other, linking together to form a tight mesh around each bubble of carbon dioxide gas in the soda. In order to form a new bubble, or even to expand a bubble that has already formed, water molecules must push away from each other. It takes extra energy to break this "surface tension." In other words, water "resists" the expansion of bubbles in the soda.

When you drop the Mentos into the soda, the gelatin and gum arabic from the dissolving candy break the surface tension. This disrupts the water mesh, so that it takes less work to expand and form new bubbles. Each Mentos candy has thousands of tiny pits all over the surface. These tiny pits are called nucleation sites - perfect places for carbon dioxide bubbles to form. As soon as the Mentos hit the soda, bubbles form all over the surface of the candy. Couple this with the fact that the Mentos candies are heavy and sink to the bottom of the bottle and you've got a double-whammy. When all this gas is released, it literally pushes all of the liquid up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast. You can see a similar effect when cooking potatoes or pasta are lowered into a pot of boiling water. The water will sometimes boil over because organic materials that leach out of the cooking potatoes or pasta disrupt the tight mesh of water molecules at the surface of the water, making it easier for bubbles and foam to form.

When a scoop of ice cream is added to root beer, the "float" foams over for essentially the same reason. The surface tension of the root beer is lowered by gums and proteins from the melting ice cream, and the CO2 bubbles expand and release easily, creating a beautiful foam on top

Next question... Why should you use diet Coke or diet Pepsi? The simple answer is that diet soda just works better than regular soda. Some people speculate that it has something to do with the artifical sweetner, but the verdict is still out. More importantly, diet soda does not leave a sticky mess to have to clean up. Hey, that's important.

What's the record for the biggest Mentos fountain? My official record is a 18 foot blast that shot up and almost took out a half million dollar, high-definition television camera. You'll find video on-line at www.SteveSpanglerScience.com of some of our favorite eruptions.

On a personal note... I've performed this demonstration well over a thousand times - on television, talk shows, science conventions, teacher associations, for CEO's at huge motivational speaking rallies, for Nobel Prize winners and anyone else who might watch. And the reaction is always the same... that's amazing! My thanks to Lee Marek who originally shared the Mentos idea with me and to the hundreds of teachers and science enthusiasts who continue to share their funny pictures, videos and experiences.

[nostatic]

i wouldn't know. I'm no average citizen