Sometimes, the seemingly silly things you do with your kid(s) are often the more impressionable/memorable. A friend had told me about some outrageous experiment coursing through the internet, then being talked about on late night shows which really rather intrigued me. He said that if you put a few Mentos into a newly opened bottle of Diet Coke, it would “erupt†and shoot out of the bottle. I personally drink a phenomenal amount of Diet Coke and I do occasionally do eat Mentos. So the natural conclusion that if I ate a few Mentos while drinking a Diet Coke might result in an embarrassing explosion was just too funny. I did some net research and sure enough there is a great video explaining why this phenomenon happens, but before you go to that, do you really think this would work? Would dropping a few sugared candies into an innocuous and unshaken liter of diet Coke really blow up? Is this a threat to transpacific or transatlantic jetliners? The answer was rather surprising…
You will need a large plastic bottle of Diet Coke, unopened and unshaken. You also need a tube of white Mentos and a test tube or cylinder to put the Mentos in so that it can fall rapidly into the bottle of soda. 
Place all the Mentos in the test tube. Open the bottle of diet coke and place it firmly on the pavement. Place a cardboard calling card on the top of the bottle opening and the inverted test tube over that. The idea is to pull the calling card and 13-14 Mentos will rapidly fall into the bottle while you quickly step back. It did blow up! Though our experiment only worked to the height of about 4 feet, as opposed to the American record of say 14 feet (but using a 2 liter plastic bottle), it did shoot about 80% of the fluid out of the bottle. My conclusion? Local Diet Coke really does have less, a lot less, carbonation than its American counterparts. Go to this link if you are curious why the mentos causes an explosion and watch the video as well…
16 Responses
Wow! I’ll try that when my pamangkins are around. It will surely make me an ultra cool tita :p
It sounded like the stuff made of urban Internet legend when I first heard of it … but then I saw a fantastic orchestrated coke+mentos music video on this site:
https://eepybird.com/
It will probably take some doing to blow up a jetliner with this but it will definitely do dramatic aviation interior decorating effects just like I did once with my cottage cheese finished ceiling trying to make a quick hot chocolate drink with my blender.
The diet-coke-mentos video was so much fun, the guys in the video even had a guest appearance at David Letterman some nights ago.
Funny, because I just watched an episode of Myth Busters last night shown at Discovery Channel and they explained why such reaction happens, attributing it to nucleation. They even tried different types of mentos, but only the mint ones had rapid carbon dioxide release, as the flavoured ones were coated and the CO2 can’t escaped fast enough. Diet-soda works also because it has more carbonation and aspartame, giving you that geyser effect.
They also tried using the mentos-eruption to rocket the coke bottle but the force wasn’t strong enough to thrust the bottle/s upwards, nothing dangerous. In fact, in their experiments, it was even more dangerous to place dry-ice (solid carbon dioxide) in a bottle of cold water and then capped, the reaction was not immediate but the explosion disintegrated the soda bottle. I suggest not to try that one at home. Maybe commercial airliners should also look for smuggled dry-ice. :)
EVERYBODY…you MUST go to the link given by WYSGAL above, it is too amusing for words. Truly, a video worth waiting for the entire thing to download!
putting mentos on soda bottles was really fun.when i was in grade school, most of my classmates would buy a bottle of pepsi and a roll of mentos just so everyone would have fun during recess.:D
We have done this! It’s hilarious! A younger cousin of mine and his father did it when we were all together in the beach…too funny and what a coincidence :)
We used to have this game as kids where we would drop raw rice into coke and see who could drink up all the fizz without spilling anything. Nothing as explosive as mentos but the rice also made the coke fizz a lot.
That website is hilarious, especially experiment 137, like the Bellagio fountains. Thanks wysgal for pointing us in the right direction.
One of those great chemistry experiments for kids, relatively cheap and safe to do.
Mila, you’re right, that was the funniest! Thanks marketman and wysgal, for my laugh today. :)
I saw this on David Letterman and you could see that even Dave was so curious and he had a blast doing it I think 3 to 4 times. It was really funny!
Didn’t take people long to wonder what happens when you drink the Diet Coke and then eat the Mentos…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSXMNqIPZTw
naku baka mabasa ito ni GMA and ipagbabawal ang diet coke and mentos sa eroplano.. wait! bawal na pala magdala ng liquids… tsk tsk
and sayang naman ang 1.5L ng diet coke heheheheh
This looks like something I just saw on Numb3rs last week.
when I was in grade school we put mentos in our Coke in cups and yeah, it bubbles a bit. . .
I LOVE diet coke explosions!!!heheeheheh. I always do that to my teacher!!!!hahhahahah