Is It Ameliorate To Diet Coke Or Mentos?

A small, round mint and a large, brown drink are the ingredients for one of the world's most powerful bombs, the soda geyser. It doesn’t have to be Diet Coke and Mentos, or even a dark soda and a mint; when the Mentos are dropped into the bottle, the carbonation in the Diet Coke looks for something, or anything, to cling onto. As the carbon finds it’s “rock,” especially when it’s Mentos, it forms bubbles; Mentos’ reason for being so efficient with this is actually having 40 or so layers of sugar carbon uses to cling onto. The significance of forty plus layers of sugar is it’s uncanny ability to dissolve quickly into liquids, as the carbon clings onto the Mentos and it starts bubbling, the sugar dissolves, creating an even greater surface area

One of the biggest factors is surface area of the item dropped into the soda. Getting Mentos that had more layers of sugar would greatly ameliorate the demonstration, as the initial surface area would increase so would layers below, creating more area for the bubbles to gather and expand. Carbonation also plays a huge role in the reaction, and is actually the only reason this reaction occurs. The carbon finds anything to cling onto when dissolved into liquids, and as it finds objects to cling onto it forms bubbles. With the initial surface area of the Mentos and the layers of sugar dissolving quickly, creating more, new surface area, a perfect catalyst for a bubble explosion in the Diet Coke is born (Spangler). In addition to surface area and carbonation, temperature can play a huge factor in the awe of the explosion. Heating up the Diet Coke has a tremendous effect on the intensity of the blast; particles moving around far more quickly will cause carbon molecules to smack into the Mentos even more quickly creating EVEN MORE bubbles in the same timeframe

Having ice cold Diet Coke and frozen Mentos would make the event far less exciting; carbon molecules would not be able to move fast enough, nor would the cold Diet Coke be able to melt the frost around the Mentos quickly enough to make a spectacle. Frozen Diet Coke is obviously not going to work and explaining why would be an insult. If the experimenter were to shake the bottle furiously and open just a smidgen to release the carbon dioxide before continuing onto dropping Mentos into the decarbonated soda, there would be little to no reaction depending on how efficient the “scientist” performing the experiment was with shaking the bottle. Additionally, using less Mentos would be just as silly as anything mentioned previously, due to lowered surface area for carbon to latch itself onto