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Diet COKE AND MENTOS


gaara

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can someone please. explain what the reaction is. thanks.

 

an is it powerful enough to explode a human stomach.

 

my friend an i had a debate. an i dont belive you could eat a packet of mentos, chew them up.. get them in your stomach.. then straight away drink like 2 litres of diet coke. an then you stomach will explode.

 

is that at all possible?

 

what are the circumstances where your stomach would explode. like what would you have to do? drive the coke 1st an then eat the mentos? or what.. thanks...

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  • 4 weeks later...
pssssh!

 

that just means the hard shell is made of something different. that doesnt test the texture at all. they should powder and/or polish a mentos and see how that does.

 

Yeah, thats very poor scientific method. Its clear the surface plays a role, but I doubt that's the only thing at play.

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Yeah, I and my kids had fun with this after watching mythbusters. I agree the testing method was bull, the coating clearly was the problem. The explanation makes sense - allowing larger surface area exposure. I found that diet coke with aspartame reacted the best. Sugar and other artificial sweetners not as good.

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Yeah, the mythbusted did their usual half-assed solution to it. They didn't ensure that there was a consistent amount of CO2 in the two samples when they compared the diet coke and soda water, and no mention of tests to ensure that there is some degree of consistency between different samples of diet coke. They didn't come up with any actual reactions when they added the chemicals. Does, e.g. aspartame and Mentos actually create CO2 by itself, or does it just cause the release of more dissolved CO2? Are other gases released, too?

 

Sodium benzoate is C7H5NaO2. Aspartame is C14H18N2O5. Caffeine is C8H10N4O2. I can see potential for CO2 and H2 being formed/released. They should have mixed the chemicals up in regular water, too, to check.

 

I suspect that the reaction with the Mentos breaks up some of the molecules, which reduces the solubility of the CO2.

 

The "waxy coating" on the other test not only reduces the surface area, but protects it from chemical reactions, too.

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