Anyone out there know the chemistry behind this?

Mentos, OJ? MENTOS? The candy with the totally incoherent postmodern Dadist commercials? You actually touch that stuff? Eeeewwwww!

oj: cruel, I tell ya! Just plain cruel! Leave those poor soccer nancies alone, they are very sensitive.

Mike,
Mentos are good for one thing, but only one thing: Making Coke geysers.

I've seen some of the videos, and it looks like a hoot.

Mike,
Mentos are good for one thing, but only one thing: Making Coke geysers.

I've seen some of the videos, and it looks like a hoot.

bartman;

My experience is that putting any kind of sugar in carbonated soda causes the CO2 to come out of solution.

Eat a brownie while you're drinking a beer and your mouth can pull off the same magic trick.

Give your buddy the vertical toast sometime: rap the bottom of your bottle against the top of the one he's holding and wait a few seconds for the fun to begin.

Sometimes it doesn't take much to force gases out of solution.

AOG,

Thanks. I was hoping for the actual chem rxn. Something like C6H12O6 --> CO2 + H2O

(I know, I know...it's not a balanced equation)

Bartman:

I don't think it's a chemical reaction per se; what you have is dissolved CO2 (which is already starting to come out, once the pressure is released by opening the bottle) undissolving very suddenly. Not sure why Mentos would work so well...

I suspect I won't have time to try the experiment this weekend. Too many good footie matches to watch. Beginning with the North London derby between Spurs and Arsenal, played for the last time at Highbury, kickoff at 6:45 am central time, tho I'll be sleeping in and watching it on tivo.

AS for mentos, a buddy of mine from college went to a Halloween party once as the Euro-dork guy from the mentos commercials. He just acted like an idiot all night and when challenged on it he'd pull out a roll of mentos and flash the same sh*t-eating grin as the dude from the commercial.

What if you use Pop Rocks instead of Mentos?

Mikey dies.

For best results, use a two liter bottle, 13 mentos. Critical point - the mentos must go in as quickly as possible, otherwise they start getting displaced by the outgoing fizz. I tried making a simple paper funnel, but it was still too slow. I later watched the video. For those that haven't seen it:

Place the mentos in a test tube. Cover the tube with something like a business card, turn it over and place it directly over the soda spout. Pull the card and you get a very quick release and an impressive geyser.

Bartman;

Yes, there is no chemical reaction. All of the fuzzing is already in the Coke, it's just a matter of releasing it. The CO2 is not chemically bonded, it is just dissolved.

My theory is that the Mentos have a surface that provides a lot of nucleation sites where gas bubbles can grow and detach.

This is thermodynamics in action; it's the PG version of dropping Potassium in water.

Sodium is fun, too. Always wondered what would happen if you took a disk and tried to skip it like a rock on a body of water. Would the first ignition ruin the trajectory? Or how many skips could you get?

Then there's "soaping geysers". Here's a photo or two that show what happens when it's done right. What the first photo doesn't show are the huge pillows of foam filling the ditch along the highway.