"NewScientist" news and stories

Combining Mentos and Coca-Cola can lead to a fountain effect of soda pop, but do you know why it happens?

Last year, New Scientist published this video on the whys behind Mentos and Coke explosions. Turns out that mint Mentos just have the right surface area to do the carbonated experiment.

The party trick of sorts is so popular, companies like EepyBird.com sell Mentos and Coke kits to make your own eruptions. Diet Coke works best.

The New Scientist is causing a stir in the cheese and wine circles with a report that concludes that it doesn't matter what wine you serve. Yep, bring out the crap stuff for you guests as cheese masks the subtle flavours in wine and you loose the complexity.

Now I have always thought that a decent Sauvignon Blanc with its punchy, not overly complex flavours, is the best match for many cheeses and as the report states that cheese suppressed 'just about everything including berry and oak flavours' I appear to be on the right track.

Strong cheeses suppress flavours more than milder cheeses (no surprise there) but flavours of all wines were suppressed. The tech stuff suggests that proteins in the cheese bind flavour molecules in the wine so that the cheese's fat coats the mouth deadening the tasters ability to detect a wines flavour.

Personally I think the best advice is to match a cheese, as far as possible, with a wine from the same area - a tad tricky I admit for Lancashire or Cheshire but for France, Italy, Spain and the like quite an easy task.

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