Documentary Mystery Reality-TV Jamie and Adam try to scientifically explain the recently publicized and highly entertaining chemical reaction caused as a result of placing a Mentos candy into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke. However, there are very few candies with the same kind of porous surface as Mentos, which is why the science experiment is typically done with these candies instead of others. While there are many stories of people dying from suddenly exploding due to the rush of carbon dioxide expanding in their stomach, none of these stories are factually true and no video footage has ever been recorded of such an accident. It is also found in many foods, including meat and fish. Because these molecules are thus less likely to hold onto each other, the solution is easier to disrupt. In this case, ice melting into water is a physical reaction. Buy chewing up the candy you have destroyed all the little pores that result in the large surface area responsible for the nucleation reaction. Still not quite getting it? Copyright 2023 @ Sodoapopcraft.com Watson-Publishing Limited Co. Telephone: +441414590217 Email: [emailprotected]. The reaction is so intense, you can make a rocket propelled by . Making Lots of Bubbles. Gotta do it fast, though. If this were the case, eating Mentos and drinking soda may indeed be dangerous. When Mentos react with Coca-Cola, the following reaction is explosive, rapidly forming a fountain of pressurised Coke that then spurts out of the bottleneck and shoots into the air. The Hypothesis The scientific method is an important way scientists make observations and come to conclusions. The mints are small oblate spheroids, with a slightly hard exterior and a soft, chewy interior.. The Diet Coke and Mentos experiment results from the nucleation of carbon dioxide from liquid to gas. also, i had to lay down to hold in the gas. Thankfully, theres already a well-known escape hatch located at your mouth. [1], Tonya Coffey, a professor at Appalachian State University, used the experiment to give her undergraduate physics class a real-world research experience as one of their laboratory assignments. Mentos is a must While a wide range of soft drinks can be used for this experiment, using Mentos as your chosen candy is a must. Theories abound as to why this happens, with some bloggers speculating that it is an acid-base reaction because Coke is acidic. The bubbles that appear on the surface of Mentos must then travel a further difference to reach the surface of the soda, giving them more time and space to disrupt the solution. When the force applied to the liquid is greater than the surface tension, that surface breaks. This spectacle is mainly caused by a physical reaction that rapidly releases the dissolved carbon dioxide from the beverage. Additionally, SodaPopCraft.com participates in other affiliate programs, Clickbank, CJ, ShareAsale and other sites and we sometimes get a commission through purchases made through our links. The narrow neck of the bottle also intensifies the pressure and speed because it forces the flow rate to increase. When the Mythbusters performed this experiment, even dumping the contents of a Mentos and Cola fountain directly into the stomach did not cause it to burst. What is the science behind the mentos and coke experiment? If your eruption wasn't everything you'd hoped for, make sure you have fresh ingredients. Find out more about our chemical manufacturing services, facilities, and accreditations. In order to understand why Coke and Mentos react so explosively, you have to understand how both ingredients work in the first place. No news accounts of such a death (in Brazil or elsewhere) have surfaced, and given the media's interest in "Mentos effects," such write-ups wouldn't have gasped their last on a jaded editor's desk because they weren't deemed sufficiently newsworthy to include in that day's edition of the local rag. This blog aims to bring you everything soda-related - so whether thats burning questions, tips, recipes, and even in-depth tutorials for making your own healthy soft drinks at home. Mint Mentos candies 2-liter Diet Coke 2-liter Diet 7-Up 2-liter Dr. Thunder 1-liter measuring beaker Procedure: Unscrew the cap of the first 2-liter bottle of soda . But, any carbonated beverage works. The YouTube video discussed above is not exactly scientific, however. Acids and bases are common classes of chemicals that react with each other and with water. I'll try more next time. A harmless procedure it's clearly not one look at online video clips of the force of "Mentos effect" eruptions shooting out of pop bottles should convince even the most adventurous not to risk any part of their digestive systems on such parlor tricks. A Big ass explosion happenspretty damn cool. We dropped two Mentos into a bottle of normal Cola and Diet Cola. It makes it a rather impractical exercise, i think. Pouring soda into a muddy hole in the ground does the same, so the Mentos are totally unnecessary. Its not only the surfaces of the Mentos that react with Coca-Cola. This way, you can see which one erupts higher. ", 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events. an experiment that tested 15 types of carbonated beverages with Mentos, 11b 13 Aston Fields Road,Whitehouse Industrial Estate, Runcorn, Cheshire, WA7 3DL. The resulting splash from diet soda with this mixture would surely be something to record. This spectacle is mainly caused by a physical reaction that rapidly releases the dissolved carbon dioxide from the beverage. However, the failure of this explosive combination of candy and soda to cause any fatalities should not be taken as a ringing endorsement of chasing down a handful of Mentos with as much pop as can be gulped. 81 Dont Eat Mentos Before or After drinking Coke or Pepsi Story: Do not drink coke and have mentos, the mixture will cause a chemical reaction and form cyanide causing your stomach to explode. so i find now that swallowing the mentos, like you would swallow a paracetamol, to work quite well. I then quickly swallowed whole 3 mint mentos, using a small ammount of water to chase them down quickly. Of course, this is for YouTube, so he continues drinking and swallowing candy. They covered this on Mythbusters. Christina graduated with a Master's in biology from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Diet soda does work a bit better than regular soda, but the main reason it gets used is because it doesn't leave a sticky residue on surfaces. Inflation from diet coke and mentos can cause an increase in blood pressure, heart rate, and body Not all such videos found on the Web are on the up-and-up, however, including the famed "Pepsi Girl" clip, which purports to document a demise caused by the ingestion of a mixture of Mentos and Coca-Cola. Thus, the process represented in Equation 1 - which powers the Coke and Mentos fountain - is a physical change. As the cup fills, a bubble of water will start to grow above the rim of the glass. Crushed Mentos that fell more slowly created puny fountains that only travelled about 30 centimetres. Sign up to read all wikis and quizzes in math, science, and engineering topics. Also, stand clear of the bottle after you add the Mentos. What chemical in Mentos makes soda explode? Nucleation is the process by which a state of matter becomes another state of matter on its own. As previously stated, the surface of Mentos candies is what makes this reaction work. When soda is made, manufacturers oversaturate a liquid drink with gaseous carbon dioxide. The engineer explains that the yellow nose cap is full of mentos, while the body is full of pressurized diet coke. Only after the Mythbusters pumped a large amount of compressed air into the stomach did it finally burst, and it took a LOT of air. This happens because the surface of Mentos has thousands of microscopic pores, peaks, pits and craters in it so what we see to be a smooth outer shell is pure deception. It is the classic Diet Coke and Mentos "geyser" experiment, but with the added rigor of using the scientific method to answer the question "Which will cause a larger reaction: the sugar in regular Coke or the aspartame in Diet Coke?" Anything can cause nucleation, like a lemon or a jelly bean. Experiments in a 2006 edition of the Discovery Channel programme Mythbusters suggested the chemicals responsible for the reaction are gum arabic and gelatine in the sweets, and caffeine, potassium benzoate and aspartame in the Coke. Step 3: Shake and Launch! It could easily have got quite serious, i think. Mentos ingredients also help this reaction to some extent. Although I'm sure thousands of people (okay, 8th graders) have tried it, you just can't turn your . On the wax paper, carefully use the knife to crush and cut four Mentos candies into many small pieces, as shown in Figure 2 below. So, if you open a bottle of soda gently, you get a pleasant beverage. Mentos dont only react with Coca-Cola. You press it onto a heap of half-capsules of one side, press an identical one onto a heap of the other half of capsules, cover one layer in powder and place the other one precisely on top of it, capsules down. It was funny afterwards. I tried it aboutan hour ago, still no inflation results so far, I had 1 pack of mentos and a can of pepsi max (does pepsi max work?) mentos eruption. Not surprising from a fellow who doesnt think people actually buy Mentos casually. No Dude, they just make them for Coca-Cola experiments. She is also certified in secondary special education, biology, and physics in Massachusetts. I've had a couple of thoughts about the swallowing problem. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Ok, so i was wonderin about coke and mentos inflation. much more than one liter could give me on its own. This is where the carbon dioxide in the pop goes to the mentos (EpyBird.com), and create a bubbly stream that had so much pressure it shoots out of the container. Diet Coke has an artificial sugar called aspartame that reduces its surface tension capabilities. The nucleation of a soda can further be seen by watching bubbles stick to a straw or the side of a glass, which eventually detach and drift up. Likewise, stories of children dying from a soda and Mentos compination appear to be nothing more than an update of the urban legend concerning Mikey, the childhood star of a series of Life cereal commercials who was a notoriously picky eater. This is because as they rise, they disrupt the solution on their way to the surface, allowing more carbon dioxide to escape from the solution. But caffeine-free Diet Coke did just as well, suggesting that caffeine does not accelerate the reaction, at least at the normal levels in the drink. You can expect a large eruption. I'm a guy. In effect, you have rendered the candy harmlessits just candy. What they found was what I suspected, that the actual act of drinking the soda released much of the carbon dioxide. What will happen if we put Mentos in Coke? I did this all in less than a minute. What happened when you added the Mentos to the Diet Coke? Whats up people. According to the Diet Coke and Mentos Eruption article, pop is supersaturated with gas. Additionally, we do not recommend using any chemical without reading theMaterial Safety Data Sheet (MSDS), which can be obtained from the manufacturer. Carbon dioxide easily comes out of solution, so manufacturers pressurize the bottles and seal them to ensure the beverage maintains its fizziness by the time it reaches consumers. Mint candies are more basic, increasing the acid-base reaction, Mint candies are more acidic, increasing the acid-base reaction, Fruit candies have a more rough coating, decreasing nucleation sites, Fruit candies have a smoother coating, decreasing nucleation sites, http://www.appstate.edu/~coffeyts/DietCokeandMentos.pdf, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb6neBVtvsE, https://brilliant.org/wiki/why-do-mentos-explode-in-coke/. Forgot password? One reason is their large surfacetovolume ratio, which allows millions of bubbles to form from each piece. "Water molecules like to be next to other water molecules, so basically anything that you drop into the soda that disrupts the network of water molecules can act as a growth site for bubbles," Coffey told New Scientist. What is the Difference Between Convection and Induction Cooking? Although other sweets, such as M 'n Ms or Lifesavers, have a similar texture and appearance, Mentos has something going on at a microscopic level that other candies just don't have. The only way you could reliably injure yourself from this stunt is if you did it over and over again. Sticking a finger into a glass of soda will result in the formation of tiny bubbles full of carbon dioxide that stick to the skin. It is best to use the regular Mentos without extra coatings. The short answer is that eating Mentos by chewing them up while drinking Coca-Cola, or any other soda, will little to no effect. [1] Other factors that affect the growth rate or total number of carbon dioxide bubbles also changed the geyser's height, such as temperature and the original surface tension of the soda. Drop several Mentos into a bottle of coke or lemonade, and a huge eruption of bubbles shoots out several meters high. When analyzing my new approach to this time . Update Date: 3 January 2023. The bubbles' buoyancy coupled with their rapid growth, causes them to rise to the surface, resulting in an eruption of foamy diet soda. But i think nucleation sites are the way to go, not an actual chemical reaction. A study reveals why Mentos and Coke can be a dangerous combination. Youll suddenly experience an upsurge of soda foam and will likely burp or vomit up large amounts of the stuff in seconds. The place i normally order it from has been most unreliable lately, hence the halt in the "research". After all, its well known that dropping Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke will cause a sudden geyser of soda foam to erupt. It is almost certainly not true that anyone has ever died from doing this. Then I immediately chugged another half liter or so of coke. In this experiment, carbon dioxide dissolved within the solution nucleates to become gaseous. They are a pain in the ass to make, though. But i think nucleation sites are the way to go, not an actual chemical reaction. In an . NEW CHALLENGE and it turned put great. Put the open end of your tube of Mentos on the card and place it directly over the opening of the soda bottle. Are There Any Long-Term Health Risks Eating Mentos & Soda? When combining Diet Coke and Mentos, one would get a physical reaction. Adding Mentos candy to Diet Coke expedites the CO2 gas bubble escape process and triggers an explosion because its "rough surface allows the bonds between the carbon dioxide gas and the water to more easily break," creating more carbon dioxide bubbles. From left to right: action of five Mentos candies (per bottle) with Perrier, classic Coke, Sprite, and Diet Coke A Diet Coke and Mentos eruption (also known as a soda geyser) is a reaction between the carbonated beverage Diet Coke and Mentos mints that causes the beverage to be expelled from its container. how can they do it then? 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Up large amounts of the soda released much of the bottle also intensifies pressure. A state of matter on its own that surface breaks Long-Term Health Risks Mentos... 'S in biology from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette exercise, i.. In secondary special education, biology, and accreditations to go, not an actual chemical.! Over the opening of the stuff in seconds n't everything you 'd hoped for, sure. Vomit up large amounts of the stuff in seconds and quizzes in math, science, and topics...
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