Rocket Man
| 8 June, 2010 | Richard P. Grant |
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What do you get if you mix 108 bottles of Coke Zero and 648 Mentos mints?
A rocket car, that’s what.
What’s a little more startling, to me at least, is that the science of the reaction is the subject of a paper in the American Journal of Physics (thanks to Byte Size Biology for the heads up).
The Diet Coke and Mentos reaction is a fun demonstration in chemistry and physics classes of many important concepts in thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, surface science, and the physics of explosions. The reaction has been performed numerous times on television and the Internet, but has not been systematically studied. We report on an experimental study of the Diet Coke and Mentos reaction, and consider many aspects of the reaction, including the ingredients in the candy and soda, the roughness of the candy, the temperature of the soda, and the duration of the reaction.
Physicists, huh? Can’t imagine biologists being so frivolous… unless you know better, of course. There might even be a prize for the best example.
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That’s solved that one then. Does Pepsi do the same?!
Here are links to two papers that show biologists can explore science’s outer limits as well as any physicist!
Study of the utility of chocolate bars as surrogates for educating patients about osteoporosis:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7633/1285
Meta-analysis of whether parachutes have actually been proven to prevent injury from “gravitational challenge”:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7429/1459
Sooooooooooo….. what does that combination do in your gut??????
I came across a video of that, once…but didn’t watch it. The guy barfed up a kidney, essentially.
Biologists can’t do this because NIH grants will no longer pay for food and drink (or entertainment).