okey can anybody explain to me why coke and mentos would make the coke explode???

Answer 1

It's like when you add baking soda to vinegar; it just makes it fizzy; and Coke starts out carbonated and the mentos has somthing in it like baking sodium, so it makes it blow up. It causes the carbonated molecules to get excited and they move around and expolode

Answer 2

It won't make it explode, but it will make it overflow and geyser out of the bottle and can shoot up to 15 feet in the air. Try it with a 2-liter Diet Coke and drop about 6 mint flavored Mentos into the open top, and then quickly move away. It works.

It is a chemical reaction of some sort between the ingredients of both products.

Here are some explanations I found on the internet:

"The mentos lower the gas solubility in the solution (diet coke), causing the dissolved CO2 to be forced out of the solution and form bubbles. The speed of this reaction is rapid, resulting in a high percentage of the CO2 in the solution trying to escape in a short period of time. Because gaseous CO2 exerts more pressure (it takes up a greater volume per mole) than dissolved CO2, the pressure in the bottle increases dramatically and diet coke / CO2 is forced out of the open top of the bottle.

So in short, yes, it is a chemical reaction that starts the process; the rest is physics."

"Water molecules strongly attract each other, linking together to form a tight mesh around each bubble of carbon dioxide gas in the soda. In order to form a new bubble, or even to expand a bubble that has already formed, water molecules must push away from each other. It takes extra energy to break this "surface tension." In other words, water "resists" the expansion of bubbles in the soda.

When you drop the Mentos into the soda, the gelatin and gum arabic from the dissolving candy break the surface tension. This disrupts the water mesh, so that it takes less work to expand and form new bubbles. Each Mentos candy has thousands of tiny pits all over the surface. These tiny pits are called nucleation sites - perfect places for carbon dioxide bubbles to form. As soon as the Mentos hit the soda, bubbles form all over the surface of the candy. Couple this with the fact that the Mentos candies are heavy and sink to the bottom of the bottle and you've got a double-whammy. When all this gas is released, it literally pushes all of the liquid up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast."

Answer 3

This was just in the Columbus Dispatch 6/16/06. Some researchers at OSU did an experiment, and they had pictures in the paper.
"It works. Why? Well, it has nothing to do with the chemical makeup of the candy. It's all about the surface texture. Although Mentos appear smooth, their surface is covered with microscopic nooks and crannies called nucleation sites. As the Mentos collided with the highly carbonated diet soda, carbon dioxide gas bubbles ran over the surface of the candy. The fluid compacts itself within, then violently expands, causing a small explosion."

It looked really cool.

Answer 4

It does not explode... It causes the rapid release of the co2.

use the same bottle and fill it with water.
Then add the same amount of tablets of alka seltzer as you do with the mentos and see what happens.

Answer 5

hahaha i saw that video too.
the first answerer is wrong.
i think it has to do with teh chemicals in the coke and in the mentos.

Answer 6

because the bubbles in the coke attack the mentos

its the chalky substance in the mentos that does it

Answer 7

They have different things in them so they explode. Just like
baking soda and vinegar.

Answer 8

Shouldnt this be in the Non-Alcoholic beverage category or Food and Dining or even Physics!!!

Answer 9

This website has both the video and the explanation:

http://www.eepybird.com/dcm1.html

Answer 10

it wont explode but if u put sugar in soda it will overflow like if you shook it up