Diet Coke and Mentos??

Question

What does the shape of the Mento being round make it significant in the process of which it is dropped into the Diet Coke rather than a square Mento being dropped in?
I found something, but I am not sure

Answer 1

Mentos aren't round. They're kind of a squished sphere. But you are right that a round-ish Mentos would work better than a square one to do the Diet Coke trick. This is because it has more surface area. A perfect sphere would have the most surface area, but a squished one still has more surface than something square.

Surface area is important, because gas bubbles form on the surface of the Mentos, causing most of the carbonation in the Diet Coke to be expelled once.

Answer 2

I'm not 100% positive on this, but I'm pretty sure of it. The round shape of mentos have a higher surface area to volume ratio, resulting in a quicker and larger reaction. Whereas a square mentos with the same volume would have a small surface area. Because the coke only reacts with the outside of the mentos (it never reaches past the outer shell) then you want more surface are for more reactions.

Answer 3

Watch Mythbusters on Discovery channel. They did a whole show on the Diet Coke/Mentos experience.

The shape of the candy isn't as important as the fact that the candy has microscopic "pits" and "cratering" that create little holes that stimulate the formation of gaseous CO2 bubbles.

The caffeine, aspartame and preservatives accelerate the process as well. They proved this by dropping mentos into plain carbonated water, measuring the result, and then adding other ingredients of diet soda one by one and repeating the experiment.

They even used the reaction to power a "diet soda rocket".

Answer 4

its actually any soda with mentos, my friend just told me about that a couple of days ago, they say if u put a round mento in a carbonated drink it will make the top bubble less so u get the coke, if u put ur finger in the cup or glass while ur pouring it u can get the bubbles to go down so it won't overflow like mine did A COUPle DAys ago....

Answer 5

they just did this experiment on myth busters.the mentos work best with diet coke.....they actually had a fountain shoot 20 feet in the air

Answer 6

Shape doesn't matter but size does.Smaller better result.

Answer 7

we did the lab in science.... its the corn starch that triggers the reaction!!

Answer 8

interesting