How cool is that!?!?!?
Wait until you learn the surprise behind this picture!
If you haven’t heard of this one yet, the basic idea behind the sudden explosion (or geyser) is that when you drop enough Mentos mints/candies into a bottle, the soda will spew out of the top.
Now, for the science:
Mentos mints/candies (I really don’t know if they’re considered a mint or a candy, so I’m going with both) have a covering that is filled with small craters. This experiment’s explosion won’t work with most of the flavored varieties because they have a smooth coating. Those small craters attract the carbonation gas (carbon dioxide) enough to break the bond between the carbon dioxide and the water in the soda. Now that the carbon dioxide is free, it wants to escape by rising to the surface as quickly as possible. As it does so, it causes a glorious geyser of sticky, foamy liquid as it pushes the liquid out of its way.
And it does create a glorious display:
We experimented with different bottle sizes. While I heard people say the best explosions happen with 2 liter bottles, I found the 1 liter to be just as spectacular.
We also tried different types of sodas.
Yes, sadly Sprite and ginger ale only gave us a foamy discharge.
It did appear that the sodas that leaned toward the variety of Coke, whether name brand or off brand, performed the best.
HOWEVER!
Did you know that Mentos isn’t the only substance that can cause soda to explode!?!?!?!?!?
That first picture, the one at the head of this post is not from Mentos!
It’s from sand!
Yes, we found that sand performed as well, OR BETTER, than Mentos as creating explosions:
This was so much fun!!!!!!!!!