Fun: Mentos and Diet Coke Continued

So I watched the Mythbuster's episode over the weekend. Through experimentation they concluded that the active ingredients involved are dissolved C02, aspartame, caffeine, and potassium benzoate from the coke along with gelatin, gum arabic, and nucleation sites from the mentos.

They were able to enhance the reaction somewhat by adding rock salt which is inert, but provided a lot of nucleation sites. They were able to really enhance it by adding a nozzle to the bottle which shot the soda much higher into the air. They both concluded that this was practically the perfect fun science experiment since it was both harmless, cheap, and used widely available ingredients.

They tried to top it with some other home science experiments like the flamable soap and methane column, pringles and hydrogen explosions, and dry ice and water bombs. But in the end these all required non-grocery store ingredients and were in many cases quite dangerous as they involved fire and explosions. The worst diet coke and mentos can do is leave everything all sticky.

All in all, still not as cool as when they blew up that cement mixer, but pretty cool nonetheless.