Need:

• Pack of mentos, (the regular kind, no fruity stuff)
• 1 Two liter bottle of Diet Coke (Regular works but leaves a stickier mess)
• A sheet of paper or a towel to wrap several mentos

Steps:

1. Lay out your sheet of paper or paper towel and put a few Mentos on it (2 or 3).
   Then wrap it loosely so the Mentos can fall out later.
2. Open up your bottle of Diet Coke.
3. Dump the Mentos in.
4. Watch a beautiful fountain of soda and enjoy some left over Mentos.

Why This Works (Ipp’s best guess, not 100% sure):

• Soda has Carbon Dioxide bound tightly bound around water molecules.
• In order for the foam in water to appear the water molecules have to resist eachother
• Mentos contains Arabic Gum encased around a rough gelatin
• Arabic Gum will allow water molecules to break more easily
• The tiny pits around the mentos create nucleation sites, which basically allows carbon dioxide bubbles to form.
• So basically the mentos travel straight to the bottem of the soda weakening the resistance of the water and separating the carbon dioxide. When the water becomes “weak” enough all the Carbon Dioxide will jolt out of the soda bringing any soda that got in its way.

Comparing the Reaction to Something more understandable:

• Set up: You (water) are stopping a balloon (carbon dioxide) filled with helium and several coins (weakened water) are on it.
• Action: Someone (mentos) stops you (strong water) from holding the balloon (carbon dioxide) down and the coins (weakened water) can’t do the job.
• Result: The balloon will float into the air taking the coins with it which will eventually fall and create a “fountain” effect

Video

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Interesting & Fun.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.