Time Sync #14: If the Blue Man Group Discovered Diet Pepsi and Mentos

I would bet that the last thing you’d think of would be the results of dropping Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi.

Interestingly some people have not only thought of such things, they’ve tried it and the results are surprisng.

According to Steve Spangler Science the phenomenon is thought to be a physical phenomenon caused by the Mento’s constituents reducing the soda’s surface tension providing lots of sites for nucleation allowing a rapid rate of carbon dioxide coming out of solution and, voila! An instant fountain and minty soda.

But what more could be done with such a surprising reaction? What if you tried using 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? Outstanding!

_{PS. I note that the Mentos site invites you to “Make mentos.com your home page” … are these people just amazingly optimistic or are they on drugs? Does anyone who doesn’t work for the company really make Mentos their home page?}

_{PPS. Thanks to Jim Sterne for pointing me at this topic.}