Mentos and Coca Cola

by Nick Vagnoni, Posted Jan 2nd 2006 @ 4:20PM

In much the same vein as the glowing microwaved grapes I posted about a few weeks ago, I recently found several pages dedicated to showing what happens when you combine Mentos with Coca Cola. I first saw this amazing photo on Flickr, uploaded by someone named Undrin. Intrigued, I went to Google and found this video (here's another, just for good measure). According to Undrin's comment, the Mentos cause the surface tension of the liquid to decrease, allowing all of the carbonation to be released at once. More specifically, I learned, it's the arabic gum that causes the surface tension to decrease. It's also what makes Mentos chewy. You can find an explanation here, and more discussion on Snopes.

Filed Under: Science, Food Oddities, Ingredients
Tags: arabic gum, candy, coca cola, explosion, geyser, mentos, oddities, surface tension

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-03-2006 @1:43AM Brian said... I covered this a while back here:

http://candyaddict.com/blog/2005/10/26/mentos-plus-soda-equals-explosion/

Brian
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1-19-2006 @10:36PM yelena said... they had this little experiment on an episode of NUMB3RS last week. i thought it was awesome, but what a mess!
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