1. Background, Introduction, and Hypothesis There has been a phenomenon that has plagued the internet in the last year. This is the Diet Coke and Mentos geyser experiment. When dropped into a new bottle of the diet drink, the Mentos somehow cause an “Old Faithful” type geyser that surges out of the bottle. But just how and why does this occur? Though there have been many debates about the key ingredients, a recent experiment at Appalachian State University finally confirmed why the geyser occurs. Nucleation sites, microscopic craters on the outer layer of the mint, collect the drink’s carbon dioxide. Gum Arabic, also found in the mint, reduces the surface tension, along with the soda’s Aspertain and Potassium Benzoate, allowing the carbon dioxide to make a dramatic exit from the bottle. The hypothesis we are trying to prove is that if more mints are put In, the more drink mass will be displaced from the bottle. Procedure 1.Weigh the pop bottles to find starting weight 2.Label the pop bottles 3.Set-up the pop bottles 4.Unscrew the pop bottles and insert the selected number of Mentos 5.Observe the results and take pictures 6.Take the Mentos out of the pop bottles using a strainer 7.Weigh the pop bottles to find out how much Diet Coke was displaced 8.Record data Materials 16 Mentos 4 Bottles of Diet Coke Scale Paper Tube Camera Calculator Strainer Mentos Explosion!! Abstract Conclusion Our hypothesis, if you put more Mentos into Diet Coke, then the more Diet Coke will be displaced is correct. When one Mentos is placed in the Diet Coke, about 1 kg of Diet Coke was pushed out of the bottle by the chemical reaction. As more Mentos were placed in the bottle, the more Diet Coke spewed out. When we dropped seven Mentos into the Diet Coke bottle, almost 1.5 kg of soda were displaced. We learned that the more Mentos we put in the Diet Coke, the more soda comes out. We also learned that it is very hard to get the Mentos in the bottle. In the fourth test of five Mentos, we could hardly get all of the Mentos in before it started reacting. Therefore, in our fifth and final test of seven Mentos, we used a paper tube to ensure all the Mentos were in the bottle. To measure how much of the Diet Coke was displaced, we had to weigh the bottle and its contents twice, once before and after the test. After completing the test, we needed to extract the Mentos. We used a strainer and a bowl to get all the Mentos out while still keeping all the liquid so that then we weigh the contents. However precise we may have been pouring, some pop may have been spilled and then later included in how much pop had been displaced during this test. This may have caused a slight inaccuracy in our data. When we weighed the pop at the beginning, we should have weighed all four bottles. Instead, we only weighed one bottle and assumed that all the others were the same weight. This also may have caused an inaccuracy. If we were to redo the experiment, we would create a tube out of a sturdy material. This would allow the Mentos to enter the tube faster and more evenly than if we were just dropping them into the tube. We also would have weighed every bottle at the beginning of the experiment. In the future, we also might want to test how temperature affects how much Diet Coke is displaced and see if that could have affect the outcome of our experiment. Overall, this experiment was very exciting and was very cool to see how the Diet Coke reacts to the Mentos. 1 3 5 7 We tested how the number of mentos affected the amount of diet coke displaced after the reaction. We predicted that as the number of mentos increased, so would the amount diet coke displaced. To test this idea, we set up a series of trials, ranging from one mentos to seven mentos, to help create more consistent results. We also weighed the diet coke, mentos, and other variables before and after each trial. We found that one mentos displaced 1 kg of coke and that seven mentos displaced a maximum of 1.5 kg. However, we did run into a few minor setbacks. When performing the trial with seven mentos, we struggled to fit all seven in the bottle before the reaction started. We used a small paper tube as a temporary solution. If our group was to do this experiment again, we would also like to test how temperature affects the famous Diet coke and mentos experiment.