The Diet Coke and Mentos Experience

Hi,

I thought the video was good, but you're right - people with too much time on their hands.

Your post sparked some thoughts for me and I've put it into a post here. http://www.savvy-fat-burning-food.com/200512.html#e81

One of the biggest problems with soft drinks is the acidity – which explains the chemical reaction on the video. If you think about it the transport trucks require a hazardous chemical warning sign when carrying the Coke concentrate – this ought to tell us something.
If you want osteoporosis just drink Coke daily.

http://www.antiagingatlanta.com/lowglycemicdiet.htm

I disagree. There's just too much being said about each and every item that we consume. If it were so bad for us they couldn't have it on the market. Diet drinks also contain water and isn't water good for you? Hm...

So you're saying if I mix water and arsenic, it won't kill me if I drink it?

When they say water is good for you, they mean water on its own.

Pache: Are you serious? If I drink too much black coffee and nothing else - I get dehydrated... But isn't my coffee all water? Actually coffee is a diuretic, and flushes water out of my body.

The only sure bet is water by itself.

I'm terribly sorry to inform you Randy Smith, but you are an idiot.

The reaction between the mentos and the soda has nothing to do with acidity. The same thing will happen with any carbonated drink. EVEN SELTZER WATER! The arabic gum in the mentos allows the surface tension of the liquid to be broken more easily, allowing the carbon dioxide trapped in the bubbles to be released very quickly which creates the pressure for the fountain.
I don't hate you for you ignorance. I am just very annoyed by people who will state something as absolout fact when , in reality, they have no clue what they're saying. "Hmmm I think it's because soda is acidic. I think soda trucks have hazardous warnings on them... Yes I must be right."
Thats why we have experiments and the whole 'scientific method' thing. To prove or disprove our little hunches before we go around spouting them off as fact.

Go burn some witches

Wow Pache. Cigarettes are on the market, aren't they?

Wow. Just wow.

Sure, the government will protect me. With it's laws.

Actually, Dropout, dissolved CO2 forms a reversible reaction with water, forming carbonic acid. This allows more CO2 to dissolve into an aqueous fluid, like your blood.

In other words: if you keep pumping CO2 into or through an aqueous solution, more carbonic acid will build up (one example of LeChatelier's Principle that demands a reversible reaction shift towards an equilibrium point), lowering the pH of the solution.

So, for all of you considering being Dropouts, here's a tip: stay in school.

Small post-script: Dropout was correct in that the reaction of the Mentos with the soda had very little to do with the acidity of the soda.

why doesn't club soda have as big as a eruption as diet coke?

I'm guessing because there is less CO2 to be released from the water? When drinking soft driks I think the water is more carbonated, but Club Soda has less CO2 in the water as it is usually mixed with other things.

But if CO2 is released from your lungs when you respirate, can't you blow into water with a straw until it becomes highly acidic and wouldn't that make it carbonated? Or does carbonated water and carbonic acid have nothing to do with each other?

Because I remember doing an experiment with Bromythol Blue mixed into water and when you blew in the water enough it became yellow signifying carbonic acid. I wonder how it tasted...

Mentos and diet coke taste good together. Someone should recommend it to coke.

Why don't y'all just chill?

then what exactly is behind the reaction of mentos and coke (or carbonated drink for that matter)? anyone has any idea?

The allows more CO2 to Dropout,into an aqueous fluid is very dangerous
,like your blood.

WOW, I think all of you need to chill and do something better than sit online a argue about a subject so meaningless.

If you eat a 3 Musketeer, then drink coke after, it fizzes in your mouth. I discovered this all on my own, but I haven't put it on the internet yet.

There! Did that lighten the mood?

TAYLOR... Dropout was very correct- you just reworded what he said into Geek language, trying to make someone else look foolish... tisk tisk

Here is a write up from a guy named Steve Spangler on the subject:

As you probably know, soda pop is basically sugar (or diet sweetener), flavoring, water and preservatives. The thing that makes soda bubbly is invisible carbon dioxide gas, which is pumped into bottles at the bottling factory using tons of pressure. Water molecules, which are super attracted to each other, cling together and surround the tiny bubbles of gas in the liquid. The bond they form is called surface tension. Surface tension is measured by the amount of energy it takes to break the clinging water molecules apart. It takes a lot of energy! Until you open the bottle and pour a glass of soda, the gas mostly stays suspended in the liquid and cannot expand to form more bubbles, which gases naturally do.

If you shake the bottle and then open it, the gas is released from the protective hold of the water molecules and escapes with a whoosh, taking some of the soda along with it. When you add Mentos to the mix, get ready for an incredible explosive reaction--so explosive that the entire bottle is sometimes emptied of liquid. Why?

Mentos contain sugar, glucose syrup (more sugar), hydrogenated coconut oil, starch, gum arabic, an emulsifier and natural flavor. The gum arabic which makes Mentos chewy, cause the surface tension of the water molecules to break even more easily, releasing more carbon dioxide gas. This effect is enhanced by the fact that, as the candy dissolves, it forms nucleation sites -- tiny pits on the surface of the mint where more carbon dioxide bubbles can form. When all this gas is released, it thrusts the entire contents of the bottle skyward, in an incredible soda blast. Hopefully you've decided to use diet soda or you may be running for the shower!

Peace-

Hmmm, let's see if I get this right....

Dropout says to Randy "...you are an idiot.", but you throw a hissy fit because Taylor used a couple of words over one syllable which, according to you, is because he is "trying to make someone else look foolish"

Learn your lesson Taylor, drop the "geek language". Next time just call someone an idiot. Apparently this does not qualify as trying to make someone look foolish.

wow..
just tried it. very cool. very very cool.
I'm going to buy a 2-liter tomorrow.
But I have a question:
the gum arabic in the "chewy" part of Mentos is what causes the chemical reactions, right?
I realize that this is aided by the surface of the mentos becoming "pitted",causing more CO2 bubbles to form(correct me if I'm wrong)
So, would the reaction be aided by slicing each of the mentos into several discs, w/ an X-acto for instance?
Wouldn't the increased durface area allow more gum arabic to be exposed, increasing the explosion and adding more area for the formation of nucleation sites?
any feedback would be appreciated.

-justanotherghost

Here at Muppet labs we are hard at work trying to uncover the secrets of the Mentos / Soda reaction. Unfortunatley, we have no Mentos. But we do have soda and soap. Using these ingredients we can report that the the surface tension theory supported by Mr. Spangler is bunk, thats right, it might as well have come from the pea sized brain of my test monkey, Beaker. Liquid soap will also significantly reduces the surface tension of water. Try it, soapy water will not bead up like regular water because the soap molecules interrupt the bonding between individual water molecules. This is a known fact. That said, soapy water should also reduce the surface tension in soda and let all the CO2 come out. While this does happen, it is by no means impressive, let alone explosive.

your wrong haha its a chemacal recation between arabic gum the coating agent in the mentos and the carbon dioxide in the soda more so the one carbon atom in carbon dioxide which causes the recation if you have questions my email is cmatboo@yahoo.com

Upon further review and experimentation, I do not believe this is a chemical reaction. We put 100 ml of fresh Coke into a few 200 ml Erlenmeyer flasks and added several different materials to see the response. Mentos, Sweet&Low, and Lake Michigan beach sand all made the Coke fizz and foam over the top. All were about equal in the amount of foam generated. Tomorrow, or the next time we have two 2 liters of unopened soda around, we will recreate the experiment and compare the "fountain height" between sand and mentos. I think this has more to do with providing surface area and nucleation sites for the CO2 to come out of solution and form bubbles. The shape of the 2 liter bottle, and the lack of air space in a new two liter lets pressure build up and causes the grand spewing fountain. The same thing happens when you put a 2 liter of soda in a sonicator. When you do that there is nothing added, no chemical reaction, but all the CO2 comes out at once creating the same effect.

Dr. B

the sweet&low has the arabic gum plus this site with arabic gum chemical reactions and other stuff about arabic gum. http://sargentwelch.com/pdf/msds/sch94417.pdf. my e mail is cmatboo@yahoo.com

I am a flamboyant retard. Sorry for being so stupid. I apologize for existing. Next time I'll experiment with dynamite and fire, to save you all the time of arguing with me. I'm off to go have poptarts in the bath tub! Yay!

You're not me! I'm me!

LIES! ALL LIES! Diet coke is the MILK OF THE INFIDEL!

I created diet coke.

I did not post those last inflammatory remarks.
I'm am investigating this purely out of scientific curiousity, not to put someone down or be a jerk. That said, there is lots of misinformation out there about alot of things. For example, Sweet and Low does not include Arabic Gum as an ingredient. And Arabic Gum is a nonreactive substance (according to the MSDS anyway)

search up arabic gum and look at what it has a chemical reaction with the olny thing it has a reaction with that is in diet coke is carbon dioxide

To be totally honest, if something is repeated multiple times on the internet, that doesn't necessarily make it true or correct. There are plenty of examples of faulty info being repeated on loads of websites. So just because there are plenty of websites that say that gum arabic causes the foaming, that doesn't make it so.

I'm looking at a packet of sweet 'n low right now, and it has no gum arabic in the list. I'm no geologist, but I don't think that arabic gum is present in sand (I may be wrong on this). So if both of those things work just as well as the mentos, at the very least it brings the gum arabic thing into question.

Themes, why'd you put a link up for the gum arabic msds? I don't see anything on there that has anything to do with this thread...am I missing something?

wow it was totally wikid!

yup that was awesome!...eh/..yea!hahaha that was so kewl

Why just diet coke? Does this experiment not work the same in any other soft drink?

try the other candies, like cinnamon mentos, or apple mentos, or something off the wall

you guys is so dumb, obviously the mentos company has harnased some kind of power with in there candy...like cold fusion, or hydro fission. ok so a really good experiment you all need to try is swallowing as many (whole) mentos as possible and then chuging some diet coke as fast as possible, then skip around on 3 feet. you is be will so cool.