Diet COKE AND MENTOS

[gaara]

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...

[Sisyphus]

Nothing would make your stomach explode. At worst you'd just vomit.

[Callipygous]

you would have to swallow something that would expand faster than your body could respond by vomiting. i dont think it would have to be a bomb, but it would have to be more than your good ol baking soda and vinegar.

[swansont]

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

Dissolved CO₂ coming out of solution.

 

You might want to avail yourself of the search function

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21596

[noel]

saturated CO2 will escape from the coke solution while going down your throat

hence u need not worry about exploding stomach

[chemfreak]

there was an episode like that on mythbusters once but it was coke and pop rocks

 

 

IM BACKK!!!!!!!! :-) :D

[iglak]

Experiment #137

it works like that (really awesome video)

[MulderMan]

Reminds me of the film 'Urban Ledgends'

[blackhole123]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EWsv3IQ7HMI

 

good explaination

[Callipygous]

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.

[[Tycho?]]

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.

[john5746]

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.

[swansont]

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.