Mentos and Cola

[rct]

What causes the cola to jet out of the top of the bottle?

[ninjagaiden]

What causes the cola to jet out of the top of the bottle?

 

well, Ok there is this thing called nucleation. Nucleation is when the carbonation and certain ingredients inside of the soda react with the surface of the mento and then tiny bubbles cause a quick reaction in the soda as it sinks into the bottom and then the bubbles shoot to the top very quickly causing all the excess bubbles to erupt out of the top of the soda and then making the explosion. Very few candies can do the same thing and only regular mentos can cause this reaction. The fruit ones are coated in a waxing that prevents nucleation. Other candies like pop rocks or skittles can't do it because of their covering and or the ingredients inside of it

[meriadoc]

Good explaination ninjagaiden. There was a MythBusters episode on this where they tried to get an insanely high fountain of Coke to shoot out of the bottle. It was pretty cool. The episode wasn't really going after a busted, plausible, or confirmed rating, but just trying to explain the reaction. You'll find a summary of all the other contributing factors in Episode 57.

 

 

[JcX]

rct, I've read this mentos coke quite long ago, and I've search wiki and its main site for the explaination.

 

First is the nucleation site as ninjagaiden explained, a site for fast collecting CO2 bubbles, simply explained.

 

Second explaination is about one of the ingredient used in mentos, namely Arabic gum.

Research shown that Arabic gum has the potential to lower the surface tension of CO2 bubbles in the Coke, therefore the CO2 in Coke will release rapidly into the atmosphere and cause this eruption like blast.

 

But according to the site, scientist still can't figure out which explaination suits better. (I get this info about 2 years ago, I not sure the info is still correct or not)