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Science at home

We had a fun "experiment" yesterday. We took a 2 liter bottle of diet Coke and some Mentos, put 4 Mentos at the same time into the bottle, and shot a huge jet of soda into the air about 8 feet high! It was quite exciting, although I think the warnings that you might want to use eye protection were a bit overblown.

I suppose that it was an experiment only in the loosest sense of the term, but Michael forsees lots of fun in the future: using other types of soda, other methods for adding the mentos to the soda, and so on. It did get us out of the house for a while, and had Eleanor and Amanda dropping mentos into the used soda bottle and watching to see what happened---so cute!
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C. L. Hanson said…
What fun!!!

Did you close the bottle and shake it before it shot, or did it shoot immediately as you added the mentos?

Our most recent food-science experiment was to put M&M's in water and watch the M&M's turn white as the color dissolved into the water. A tad less exciting, but the kids loved it! :D
August 27, 2007 at 2:24 AM
mathmom said…
Hey c.l.! You get a stack of about 4 mentos ready, drop them all in at the same time, and stand back! Don't shake the bottle, just leave it open.

I think the main reason you use diet soda is that it doesn't attract as many ants...

Watching M&Ms sounds like a good activity for keeping kids (semi) quiet. Sometime I'll post about the other projects we've done (eggshells in diet coke, rock candy, making paper...).

Go ahead and add me to your blogroll, the next time you're editing. I've been hesitating because I wasn't sure I actually wanted real people reading it, but several people have told me that my blog is at least a little entertaining, so I guess I'm ready =).
August 27, 2007 at 7:38 PM
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