Diet Coke and Mentos eruption

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diet Coke and Mentos Eruption (also known as a Mentos eruption or a soda geyser) is a reaction of Diet Coke and mint flavored Mentos candies.

A Diet Coke bottle shortly after Mentos were dropped into it

1 History
2 Explanation
3 See also
4 References
5 Further reading
6 External links

[edit] History

Steve Spangler initiated the Internet phenomenon when he appeared on 9News in 2002 and 2005, both times showcasing the experiment. ^[1]

The experimenting result was then further popularized by the website Eepybird.com, which promoted a video in which two men re-created the fountain display seen in front of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas using a timed series of eruptions. Later Eepybird videos featured "self-activating" soda jets linked together to form a Domino Rally-style effect. In September 2007, the videos, including the "Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments" video that was viewed more than 10 million times, earned the pair the highest yearly payout of US$50000 from the video hosting service Revver.^[2]

The eruption has been reproduced many times by popular sources, including the television shows Numb3rs and MythBusters and an appearance by cast member Kari Byron in FHM magazine, an experiment conducted by Bart Simpson on The Simpsons episode, "The Debarted", an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman by physics teacher Lee Marek, and others. The MythBusters later created what is believed to be the record highest soda jet recorded, at over 29 feet (9 meters), using a nozzle.^{[citation needed]}

A World Record for a Mentos Eruption was set July 10, 2007 by Circle R Ranch and Books Are Fun during a special event in Flower Mound, Texas. Guinness World Records certified the record-setting effort when 850 independent sales representatives from Books Are Fun, a Reader’s Digest Company, simultaneously dropped Mentos into individual two-liter bottles of Diet Pepsi. The New World record - 791 Mentos Eruptions - beat the former World Record was set on May 24, 2007 in Cincinnati, Ohio when 504 Mentos-and-Coke geysers were set off reaching over 29 feet with the use of a nozzle.

On April 23, 2008, students in the Belgian city of Leuven set a new world record, simultaneously launching 1,360 Mentos geysers^[3]. On May 14, 2008, students at Louisville Male High School in Louisville, Kentucky, broke this record by setting off 1,800 reactions at the same time.^[4]

[edit] Explanation

The reaction was the subject of an August 9, 2006 episode of MythBusters, a popular television program on the Discovery Channel.^[5] They concluded that the caffeine, potassium benzoate, aspartame, and CO₂ gas contained in the Diet Coke and the gelatin and gum arabic ingredients of the Mentos all contribute to the jet effect.^[6] In addition, the MythBusters theorized that the physical structure of the Mentos is the most significant cause of the eruption. When flavored Mentos with a smooth waxy coating were tested in carbonated water, no reaction occurred, whereas standard Mentos added to carbonated water formed a small eruption, by their claim, affirming the nucleation-site theory. This was further supported when rock salt was used as an effective substitute for Mentos.^[6]