Science Sunday: Metos, the Fountain Maker

This past week during my Monday Fun
Magic Science Class,
we had some explosive fun...

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One of the girls in my class brought in
a small bottle of Diet Coke and a package of Mentos,
which just HAPPENED to be the same
ingredients we were going to use in our experiment.

So, before we combined my
2-liter of Diet Coke and Mentos...
...we did the Mentos experiment...
...on a much smaller scale.

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Now, for my experiment,
I included...
...Steve Spangler's Geyser Tube.

THIS PRODUCT IS SO WORTH THE MONEY!

As you watch the below video clip,
you will see why...

(Oh, and you will need to tilt your head to the side
to watch it properly-
the clip was recorded on my camera in the
wrong direction,
and I can't seem to change its orientation-
Sorry!)

Isn't that AWESOME?

I just LOVE listening to kiddos scream...

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The science behind this "magic" is as follows:

Each Mentos chewy mint has thousands tiny pits all over the surface.
These tiny pits are called nucleation sites-
perfect places for carbon dioxide bubbles in the soda to form.
As soon as the Mentos hit the soda,
bubbles form all over the surface of the mints and quickly rise
to the surface of the liquid.
Couple this with the fact
that the Mentos are heavy and sink to the bottom of the bottle
and you've got a double-whammy.
When all this gas is released,
it literally pushes all of the liquid
up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast.

That is the SIMPLE explanation-
for more detailed info, click HERE.

For the journaling form we used and all the
instructions for replicating this experiment,
just click HERE.

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For more fun with Science,
head on over to
Science Sunday...