Diet Coke + Mentos

Yesterday I met up with my sister so that she could show me the backpack she wanted for her birthday. Her friend Dan (that’s Dan Nguyen, not the Dan you see from my canoing post) tagged along and we eventually found the backpack. After that, Dan wanted to try out the diet coke + mentos experiment first hand to see what would happen. He got the urge after I mentioned that the other day I saw a banned video of some guy chug a 2L diet coke, eat mentos and have it explode out of his system.

My friends and I already tried out the experiment in our winter semester when we needed a break studying. Alas, our attempt turned out as unexciting as what happened here with Dan:

Now in school we were taught to document our experiments (labs). So here is the documentation:

Purpose:

To observe first hand what would happen when Mentos is immersed into a bottle of Diet Coke.

Hypothesis:

The Diet Coke + Mentos will react quickly and result in awesome foaming fizziness.

Materials:

• 1L Diet Coke (Purchased at Sunridge Mall dollar store for $1)
• A pack of Mentos
• Canon Powershot A40 or a similar digital camera

Procedure:

1. Place bottle of Diet Coke on a flat surface
2. Open the bottle
3. Unpack the Mentos into your hand
4. Have a lab partner prepare the digital camera for video capture and have them start capturing immediately at start of next step
5. Carefully drop the Mentos into the opening of the bottle trying as best and as quick as possible to insert them one right after the other
6. Move away and watch the fizziness
7. Download captured video from digital camera onto computer
8. Upload to YouTube

Observations:

• Since Dan held the bottle at a 45° angle, the pressure from the chemical reaction between the Mentos and Diet Coke caused the bottle to propel itself backwards from the direction Dan was pointing the opening of the bottle. Thus, it left us with no vertical fizziness to see.
• The reaction was instantaneous and almost leaves you no time to back off from getting splashed with the sticky substance that is Diet Coke.

Raw Data:

Refer to YouTube video above.

Processed Data:

Refer to YouTube video above (I wish you could do that for a real lab writeup :P).

Conclusion:

Our experiment was a failure because Dan wanted to hold the bottle at a 45° angle. For optimal results, have the bottle completely vertical with the person adding the Mentos having their face right over the top of the bottle

Improvements:

• Try mixing diet coke + mentos in my super soaker and see if it shoots far without having to pump to add pressure. Based on observations of this experiment, the reaction between Diet Coke + Mentos should create enough air pressure