how did Wiliam D. Middlebrook make the mentos and diet soda exsplotion fly higher?????????????

Answer 1

I don't know who Mr. Middlebrook is, but on stupidvideos.com I saw a video of a spectacular mentos & diet coke explosion wherein the pop bottle flew up over a house. Maybe you could get some pointers on technique from that. Point away--away--from your body.

Answer 2

Steve Spangler is the guy behind the mentos and soda experiements. You can read about his experiements and various demos on his blog: http://www.technorati.com/tag/Diet+Coke+Mentos+Experiment

Two chemists in Ilinois took on the experiement and published it in tthe Journal of Chemical Education! Drs Bauer found that to get the highest explosion you need:
diet soda
cold soda
freshly open soda

The Mythbusters (tv show) also ran these experiments in August of this year and found the same things.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether this is a chemical reaction or a physical one. Until we know that, we won't know a guaranteed way to get the explosion higher. Steve states:
"While we offer the most probable explanations below, we also understand and admit that other explanation could be possible... and we welcome your thoughts."


There are 5 references to the Mentos/Diet coke excercise in Technorati. Technorati is an interesting source for finding related articles by topic.