I am late to the dietCoke and Mentos party...

after talking with Zilla last night, it seems I am about twelve decades late to knowing about diet Coke and Mentos.

as an example, watch this all the way through:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 9427318137

anyone have any good methods for getting this to work or anything else creative around this? just curious.

Quote from ginger_lord

Fill a swimming pool with coke, drop 20ft wide mentos in it. Run.

Keep in mind part of what makes the Coke rockets work is the pressure created by the bottle pushing all the force out of one small opening. The trick is, and I think Fletch was getting at, was how to maximize the pressure.

While a swimming pool of Coke and a few boxes of Mentos might create a crazy awesome uh...something...it might not be the 400 foot geyser we all want to see. I think you'd need to have some kind of enclosed container that forces all the pressure through a single opening.

edit...

Quote

When Coke and other beverages are produced, they are bottled with CO2 gas that is pushed into the bottle at a pressure about 3 times that of normal air. This heavy pressure helps to thousands of the tiny CO2 bubbles to dissolve in the Coke but the high pressure also keeps them very small. But when the bottle is opened and the pressure is released, these bubbles get a little larger and, as they escape to the surface, they provide the characteristic fizz or carbonation that most people find very appealing. As it turns out though, these bubbles would get much bigger, much quicker if not for the fact that the water molecules in Coke (which is mostly water) attract strongly to one another. The attractive forces between water molecules forms a tight web around each bubble and this makes it difficult for the bubble to expand. This attractive force, which is sometimes called "surface tension", is so strong that certain bugs (Waterstriders) can even walk on the surface of water without sinking.

When Mentos are added to the Coke, the Mentos begin to dissolve and the gelatin and gum arabic found in Mentos instantly act to break up the attractive forces between the water molecules. It is now easier for the bubbles to grow and thousands of tiny bubbles can instantly expand to hundreds of times their original size. Meanwhile, the rough surface of the Mentos provides many little nooks and cracks that help new bubbles to form. The combination of these two processes causes the carbonated gas to erupt from the bottle like a superheated geyser in Yellowstone Park. It is truly an amazing site.

And here is a dorky university video that is much less entertaining:

http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/tbrown/curi ... smovie.MPG