Sunday, June 26, 2011

Diet Coke and Mentos Geyser


Today, we tried to make a Diet Coke and Mentos Geyser! It didn't work as well as we hoped so we are going to modify the experiment to try and get more height on our Geyser. Watch this space.

How this happens:
Soda drinks are pumped full of carbon dioxide at the drink factory to make them fizzy. It doesn't get released from the liquid until you pour it into a glass and drink it, some also gets released when you open the lid (more if you shake it up beforehand). This means that there is a whole lot of carbon dioxide gas just waiting to escape the liquid in the form of bubbles.

Dropping something into the Diet Coke speeds up this process by both breaking the surface tension of the liquid and also allowing bubbles to form on the surface area of the Mentos. Mentos candy pieces are covered in tiny dimples (a bit like a golf ball), which dramatically increases the surface area and allows a huge amount of bubbles to form.


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