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Given the urban legend about kids eating pop rocks and soda, and then having their stomachs explode, I wouldn't have believed that mixing Mentos and soda could cause such a violent reaction. But after watching the
video posted on WLTX's website, I do. (You need Windows Media Player to view it, and I had to click the "Trouble Viewing" button to make it work.) To summarize what the video shows, three Mentos are dropped into a bottle of soda, causing a geyser of soda to shoot up about three or four feet high out of the bottle. This really makes me wonder what would happen if you drank a can of soda and then downed a pack of Mentos. Personally I'm not planning to find out. I'm sure it wouldn't kill you, but I imagine it would fizz up into your throat and nose. WLTX provides this scientific explanation for the phenomenon:
Mentos contains a chemical known as ARABIC GUM (this is the ingredient that makes the mint "chewy"). This ingredient causes the surface tension of the water molecules to break even more easily, releasing more carbon dioxide gas at an astounding rate! .....The gas causes pressure to rapidly build inside the bottle which thrusts the soda upwards in a wonderful fountain-like BLAST!
Comments
In a larger-mouthed container, the pop does just what you think. It fizzes out and isn't that cool. try popping a cork or stopper in the top right after dropping the object in.
The smaller the opening, the higher the fountain.....
The real thing with mentos is that it really does make you cool and slick. It seems that everything that you do will come out ok when you eat mentos.
Just look at the commercials. It has to be true right?
She told us that it was the aspartame in the Diet Pepsi that caused the reaction. We were also told that it has to be room temperature if you want a huge explosion. I'm not sure if this works with regular pop because of a lack of aspartame, but I definately want to do this when I get home! =)
see: Cameroon lage disaster, 1986
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/21/newsid_3380000/3380803.stm
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mhalb/nyos/nyos.htm
Ask your science teacher to repeat the experiment with both diet Pepsi (contains Aspartam) and regular Pepsi (no Aspartam), side by side - this should disprove the aspartame hypothesis pretty quickly. The main advantage of using diet Pepsi is that the mess it produces is not quite as sticky, although plain carbonated water would serve as well.
To prove that it is the CO2 in the beverage that produces the "explosion", you can do the experiment with one bottle that has been left to warm up to room temperature while closed, while a second bottle is left uncapped for the same time, allowing the CO2 to escape. This second bottle should not react.
This is how we scientists test out which possible explanation for the phenomena we observe is the correct one.
It isn't the surface area of the candy or ice would do the same thing. I've put M&Ms; and other candies in pop before and never had a reaction like this before.
I did get a similar reaction when I put some ground ginger in some ginger ale.
It works with poprocks and coke but just crackles alot. Anyway thats cool man good work!8)
the Aspartam theory is false, because this works with club soda, and for many, many other reasons,
the gum arabic is out, since that's the stuff that makes mentos chewy, and once the outer shell disolves the reaction stops, and the nucleation can't be, because even once the scratches and imperfections have been disolved, the reaction continues (this occurs some time between when the fizz is completely gone, and most of the eruption is over. also, if you want to try using the mentos and soda in your stomach, you would have to swallow the metos whole, i think. i don't want to try it, so i'm not exactly sure..... but i think the reaction is caused by somthing in the outer shell.
i have a couple questions...
1. does the drink have to be 'diet coke' or can it be any kind of carbonated drink?
2. i read that it has to be a 2-liter bottle and cant be the smaller bottles is that true...if so why??
3. and i just tried it in my back yard with 'coke' it WAS pretty cool but it didnt explode very high..or at all! it kinda just dripped over the sides...like a volcano...but it went everywhere...i was waiting for it to shoot up really far! did it not shoot up because it wasnt 'diet coke' or a '2-liter bottle'??
please respond...ASAP!! i need this very soon!
I would say that it only does it with certain sizes due to the quantity of certain ingredients. But then again, Im not a scientist. Good Luck
The reason why Mentos work so well is two fold - Tiny pits on the surface of the candy and the weight of the candy. 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
You are AWESOME. Who would ever even think to that in the first place. Keep doing what you are doing and make us happy, not like you have to try or anything.
You can get an almost identical reaction by pouring coarse salt (about a tablespoon) into the top of the bottle. The resulting gusher is about five to six feet high, whereas a Mentos reaction can be in excess of 12 feet. My educated guess is that the height difference results from the Mentos sinking quickly to the bottom of the bottle, causing the trapped carbon dioxide throughout the bottle to rush to the bottom, resulting in a tremendous pressure differential.
However you look at it, it's a fun, safe experiment that gets a great reaction every time.
We're trying Mug Root Beer tomorrow (mainly because I want to drink the minty Root Beer remnants afterwards; mint root beer tastes great), but I doubt we'll get as high as the Dr. Pepper achieved.
We also are talking about a version of the experiment using actual beer.
Anyone of you could've wiki'd it, or even just googled it, but none of you did.
In the future guys, either do some research before you speak, or pass grade 8.
NEED TO KNOW ASAP PLEASE oops sorry for the CAPS it was locked
from EepyBird.com:
Several people theorized that a substance called gum arabic in the Mentos breaks the surface tension of the soda, allowing the carbon dioxide bubbles to escape rapidly. This explanation doesn
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.
So in essence it is both the suface and the gum arabic.