The Mentos And Diet Coke Reaction

Yeah, the Mythbusters got it narrowed down pretty darn well. They even established a world record by creating the largest mentos-and-coke-induced-fountain ever. It was a combination of both certain ingredients in diet coke and mentos. They simply extracted most of the ingredients from a diet coke, and put them in separate bottles,pulling the old "Sherlock Holmes test of elimination". They concluded that a few ingredients were the cause of the massive reaction, but I can't say for sure which ones. But as mentioned before, it's also because of nucleation. When zoomed into, a mentos has the surface of a golf ball, with little craters in it. A chain reaction from millions of these craters is triggered when cast into coke, causing the ray of water to burst from the bottle.

It does take a certain brand, and the authentic mentos though, and a single mentos can be sufficient. The Mythbusters enhanced the effect by adding an extension on the bottle that would narrow the ray, thus increasing power, causing the coke to actually burst up for quite a height. (it blew over their workshop)

 

 

 

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I tried it once, but it didn't work because the coke was already used for the mentos in the bottle. However you shouldn't swallow it.

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it's the carbonation. the mentos have little open pockets all over the outer shell of them, and when they come in contact with the carbonated water and caffine in the soda then a reaction happens with the mentos. and lots of little bubbles starts being released from the pockets in the shell of the mentos, and the mentos go pretty much crazy, they release so many bubbles they don't have time to settle down and they burst out of the coke bottle.

I have tryed this experements with my friends for the forth of july and it takes 3-4 mentos to have this reaction happen. and it takes a 2 liter of coke. ( this only happenes with coke not any other carbonated soda ).

so try it and see what happens. it's fun actualy. just remember to bring an unbrella if your going to be the person to drop in the mentos.

 

 

 

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Yeah, this is very interesting. I've seen many people do this (youtube) but instead of placing the Mentos one by one, they tie it into something similar to a necklace of Mentos. After that, they drop it all at once and the fizz squirts out. I want to try it out as well.

I think it requires regular Mentos and Diet Coke. I'm not sure.

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I don't really remember if we did it with diet cola or regular cola. mabey it was diet?? idk.

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Aha, I love this experiment. I haven't done it myself (mainly because my mom would kill me for making a mess), but I've seen it a lot of times. Mythbusters, a TV program on the Discovery Channel, did many experiments to find out the ingredients in Diet Coke and Mentos that cause the reaction. They found out that the Mentos actually have a lot of nucleation sites (holes) on its surface, which allows the carbon dioxide in the Diet Coke to escape as a gas. The active ingredients in the experiment would be gum arabic and gelatin in the Mentos and aspartame, potassium benzoate, and caffeine in the Diet Coke. When these ingredients react, they force all the carbon dioxide in the Diet Coke to escape, which causes the huge eruption.

Serena

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Replying to lonelymIt works with almost every pepsi/coke soft drink.

-CoolJim

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Replying to baby bearIt's actually not the carbonation or the caffeine. I'm not sure what actually causes the reaction but I tried this with coke, diet coke, sprite, and pepsi.

They all had about the same reaction which told me it wasn't the caffeine (sprite doesn't have caffeine in it). This lead me to assume that it was the carbonation.

Thus I conducted this experiment with carbonated water. I got no reaction at all. I'm also sure that its not the sugar because Diet Coke doesn't have sugar in it. The reason this phenomenon occurs is still a mystery to science.

-CoolJim

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coke and mentos
The Mentos And Diet Coke Reaction

Go on www.Youtube.Com and type in coke and mentos and its the 6th one down

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Replying to torres1287 what happens to it

What is the chemical reaction?



-showingman

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