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Mentos + Diet Coke

The other day at work, Chris & I decided to conduct our own Diet Coke + Mentos experiment in the Yahoo! courtyard:

Granted, it wasn’t the bellagio fountains, but it was fun never the less.

Some have asked why we’re doing that fruity dance in the last picture. No, it wasn’t part of the theatrics. (Although I do find the thought of a choreographed dance of software engineer & diet coke fountains amusing.)

Rather, dropping mentos in diet coke is a bit like a game of chicken.

There’s a direct correlation between the number of mentos dropped in & the height of the geyser. You want the geyser to go as high as possible, hence wanting to get as many mentos in as possible.

But as soon as that first one drops, the Diet Coke starts to fizz like something you’ve never seen before, showing its wrath & anger. You have, maybe, a half second to keep cramming in more before the fountain is in full effect. Not wanting to be on the receiving end of the angry soda (and hence wearing it contents), you instinctively jump back & start back pedaling as quick as possible once the eruption starts.

The splash radius is actually surprisingly small, so if there’s a next time, maybe we’ll look better in the pictures. Or have a full dance number ready. Either way.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 19th, 2006 at 1:31 pm and is filed under nerd-ness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to “Mentos + Diet Coke”

  1. jr Says:
    August 21st, 2006 at 10:11 am

    Next time, take about six mentos out, tape them together (just one loop, to hold them in place), and drop that in. Works better than the “one at a time” method.

    Oh yeah, and if you REALLY want a good explosive burst, skip the mentos and go for rocksalt.

  2. Bill Says:
    August 21st, 2006 at 10:46 am

    Must… resist… temptation… to… hit… Ralphs…

  3. Arnie Says:
    August 22nd, 2006 at 11:11 am

    Good to see Yahoo’s best and brightest focusing on the important issues.

    I like that adsense has an ad for “The Mentos Coke Geyser”.

  4. John Says:
    November 28th, 2008 at 8:29 pm

    I totally love the mentos and diet coke experiment. I did it with my son this weekend, He loved it (only 4 years old). We learned the basics of what a chemical reaction is and also what it looks like when a volcano erupts. Kinda neat and hands on. We found another fun website with neat experiments like this. I will put it below for anyone whos interested.

    http://weirdsciencekids.com/FunExperiments.html

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