What makes diet coke and mentos explode

Each Mentos candy has thousands of small pores on its surface which disrupt the polar attractions between water molecules, creating thousands of ideal nucleation sites for the gas molecules to congregate.

In non-science speak, this porous surface creates a lot of bubble growth sites, allowing the carbon dioxide bubbles to rapidly form on the surface of the Mentos. The buoyancy of the bubbles and their growth will eventually cause the bubbles to leave the nucleation site and rise to the surface of the soda.

Bubbles will continue to form on the porous surface and the process will repeat, creating a nice, foamy geyser. In addition to that, the gum arabic and gelatin ingredients of the Mentos, combined with the potassium benzoate, sugar or potentially aspartame in diet sodas, also help in this process.

In these cases, the ingredients end up lowering the surface tension of the liquid, allowing for even more rapid bubble growth on the porous surface of the Mentos—higher surface tension would make it a more difficult environment for bubbles to form. Diet sodas produce a bigger reaction than non-diet sodas because aspartame lowers the surface tension of the liquid much more than sugar or corn syrup will.

Tape the tube together on the side. Make sure that the bottle is on a level surface and stably standing straight. Why do you think all of this is important? Line up where the opening of the bottle is with the opening of your cartridge. Quickly pull out the flat index card, releasing the Mentos candies into the bottle.

Then step back without tipping the bottle over or disturbing the reaction. About how high did the eruption go? How much cola is left in the bottle? As with the first bottle, remove the cap and place the flat index card on top, covering the hole. Put on your eye protection and start the video camera. Quickly pull out the flat index card, releasing the crushed Mentos into the bottle, then step back without tipping the bottle over or disturbing the reaction.

How high did the eruption appear to go? How much liquid is left in the bottle? Is it more or less than the amount that was left when you used whole candies? If you videotaped the reactions, you can watch your videos now. What do you notice from the videos?

Use a tape measure and blue painter's tape to mark off the height from the top of the bottle in meters. Measurements showed that the surface tension in water containing the sweetener aspartame is lower than in sugary water, explaining why Diet Coke creates more dramatic fountains than sugary Coke.

Another factor is that the coatings of Mentos contain gum arabic, a surfactant that further reduces surface tension in the liquid. Rough-surfaced mints without the surfactant did not create such large fountains. Mentos are also fairly dense and sink rapidly, quickly creating bubbles that seed further bubbles as they rise.

Crushed Mentos that fell more slowly created puny fountains that only travelled about 30 centimetres. Trending Latest Video Free. Tilt the cup and slowly pour the soda down the inside of the cup to make as few bubbles as possible.

Take the straw out of the soda and put a pipe cleaner in. Look from the side to see if bubbles also form on the pipe cleaner. Now take the pipe cleaner out and place a Mento in the soda. Watch the Mento from the side to see what happens. The bubbles are made of a gas called carbon dioxide. The soda company puts carbon dioxide in the soda to make the soda fizzy. If you could look at the straw, pipe cleaner, and Mento with a super-strong microscope you would see that they have tiny dents, scratches, and bumps on them.

There is a pretty cool thing you can do with a bottle of soda pop and a packet of Mentos.