To start, it should be noted that it’s not just Diet Coke and Mentos that “react”; other carbonated beverages will also readily respond to the addition of Mentos. The very high level gist of what’s going on here between the Mentos and the Diet Coke is that ingredients in the Mentos/Coke and, more importantly, the structure of the Mentos allows carbon dioxide bubbles to form extremely rapidly; when this happens fast enough, you get a nice Diet Coke fountain.
More specifically, Mentos has thousands of small pores on its surface disrupting the polar attractions between the water molecules, creating thousands of ideal nucleation sites for the gas molecules to congregate. (Wait, don’t glaze over yet, read on!) So in non-sciency terms, basically, this porous surface creates a lot of bubble growth sites, allowing the carbon dioxide bubbles to rapidly form on the surface of the Mentos. If you use a smooth surfaced Mentos, you won’t get nearly the reaction. The buoyancy of the bubbles and their growth in size will eventually cause the bubbles to leave the nucleation site and rise to the surface of the soda. Bubbles will continue to form on the porous surface and the process will repeat, creating a nice foamy result.
To start, it should be noted that it’s not just Diet Coke and Mentos that “react”; other carbonated beverages will also readily respond to the addition of Mentos. The very high level gist of what’s going on here between the Mentos and the Diet Coke is that ingredients in the Mentos/Coke and, more importantly, the structure of the Mentos allows carbon dioxide bubbles to form extremely rapidly; when this happens fast enough, you get a nice Diet Coke fountain.
More specifically, Mentos has thousands of small pores on its surface disrupting the polar attractions between the water molecules, creating thousands of ideal nucleation sites for the gas molecules to congregate. (Wait, don’t glaze over yet, read on!) So in non-sciency terms, basically, this porous surface creates a lot of bubble growth sites, allowing the carbon dioxide bubbles to rapidly form on the surface of the Mentos. If you use a smooth surfaced Mentos, you won’t get nearly the reaction. The buoyancy of the bubbles and their growth in size will eventually cause the bubbles to leave the nucleation site and rise to the surface of the soda. Bubbles will continue to form on the porous surface and the process will repeat, creating a nice foamy result.
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