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Bellagio Fountains Recreated with Mentos and Coke

Posted by Zonk on Sun Jun 04, 2006 07:36 PM
from the truly-a-worthy-expenditure-of-time dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Science
Trip writes "What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane. The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes. It's a hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas."
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  • Science so Rocks! (Score:3, Funny)

    by w33t (978574) on Sunday June 04 2006, @07:43PM (#15469175) Homepage
    ...of course, now I've suddenly become very thirsty.
    --
    Music should be free [w33t.com]

  • In case of /.'ing (Score:5, Informative)

    by GillBates0 (664202) on Sunday June 04 2006, @07:44PM (#15469178) Homepage Journal
    Here's [google.com] one of the the Google Videos of the feat.

    A number of different groups of people seem to have attempted it [google.com] as the different versions available on Google depict.

  • According to the site, it's a physical thing (Score:5, Informative)

    by Omkar (618823) on Sunday June 04 2006, @07:45PM (#15469185) Homepage Journal
    Not chemical, so it should work just as well with other sodas/nucleation devices:

    "These chemists are saying that the primary cause is physical, not chemical. Their explanation: nucleation sites. If you have a liquid that is supersaturated with gas (like soda, which is pumped full of carbon dioxide), a nucleation site is a place where the gas is able to form bubbles. Nucleation sites can be scratches on a surface or specks of dust - anywhere that you have a high surface area in a very small volume. That's where bubbles can form.

    Mentos seem to be loaded with nucleation sites. In other words, there are so many microscopic nooks and crannies on the surface of a Mento that an incredible number of bubbles will form when you drop it in a bottle of soda. Since the Mentos are also heavy enough to sink, they react with the soda all the way to the bottom. The escaping bubbles quickly turn into a raging foam, and the pressure builds dramatically. Before you know it, you've got a big geyser happening!"

    • Re:According to the site, it's a physical thing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by w33t (978574) on Sunday June 04 2006, @07:52PM (#15469223) Homepage
      I had always assumed it was chemical. Interesting.

      You've given me an idea - I wonder if there is some way to suspend a substance within the fluid and create these nucleation sites simultaneously throughout the supersaturated medium?

      Perhaps some kind of ferrofluid? So you could run a magnetic field over it and cause the nucleation sites to appear which would cause the reaction to happen on a much more instant scale: read, explosive.

      Now, if only I had the material, and the knowledge, and the friends at MIT.
      --
      Music should be free [w33t.com]
      [ Parent ]

      • Ultrasonic cleaner (Score:3, Interesting)

        by moosehooey (953907)
        If you've seen the episode of Mr. Wizard's World, he did this with an ultrasonic cleaner like they have in jewelry stores. Works about as well as the Mentos.

      • Re:According to the site, it's a physical thing (Score:5, Funny)

        by antic (29198) on Sunday June 04 2006, @09:41PM (#15469624)
        For years, the big oil companies have been withholding a Mentos/Coke powered car from market... ;)
        [ Parent ]

      • Re:According to the site, it's a physical thing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Lumpy (12016) on Monday June 05 2006, @07:02AM (#15471295) Homepage
        Easiest way is to get your hands on a cylinder of C02 a regulator a modified cap that fit's a 2 liter bottle with a c02 inlet and nearly frozen water.

        Cold water holds more C02 than warm water so you fill a bottle 3/4 full of really really cold water and pressurize it with CO2 to about 35psi, leave the CO2 connected and shake the hell out of the bottle until you notice that no more Co2 is entering the water (you can hear the regulator feeding more gas) crank the pressure up to 40PSI and let it sit for a couple of minutes in a cooler full of ice and water to re chill the bottle from all that heat you put in it during shaking.

        Start the shaking once again and then let it sit in the cooler for another 10-20 minutes under pressure.

        you should be all done with he most effervesent soad water ever created. carefully remove the cap and quickly replace with a regular cap (or build a cap with a valve for best effect and speed.) so you can let this puppy warm up.

        after it warms to near 40 degrees you can remove the cap (or open the valve) and simply thump the side of the 2 liter to create a massive fountian. sometimes just releasing the cap will set it off.

        You can also do the reverse just as easily. rapidly cool a 2 liter of pop to 20 degrees F without any shaking or vibrations. then thump the side and watch a wave of ice form from the impact site to solidify most of the bottle.

        Note, you must have a sugar/Co2 solution for the supersaturation freeze effect to happen.

        A side safety note: putting pressure on a 2 liter pop bottle is dangerous. you can kill yourself, friends, neighbors, take off your head, lose an eye, etc... but I have sucessfully cranked the pressure of a pop bottle to well over 80psi and a 1/2 liter to well over 120psi (made one hell of a rocket) but bottle pressure handling is very random. Be ready for the bottle to explode at all times.

        With my valve cap design that has a 3/8" valve opening and tube I can get nearly 100 foot fountians with the super high Co2 injection method I mentioned and they usually tip over and start trying to move after 1/2 the bottle is empty because they get too light and still have lots of power left inside.

        and a soda water fountian mess is easier to clean up.
        [ Parent ]

      • Back when I was doing chemistry we were told about a lab that was destroyed by a tank of super-heated ultra-pure water (not quite the same as being super-saturated with a gas but similar). The chemists (physical of course) were heating their ultra-pure wat

    • Is this the same concept behind the explosions that the Mythbusters created in a microwave with water. I know that the water was resulted from super clean glass that is free of defect. Introducing an object will immediately cause the gas to bubble and ma
    • Hmmm, should try some activated carbon then. Anybody got an old gas mask canister?
    • Cool.

      Since the Mentos are also heavy enough to sink, they react with the soda all the way to the bottom.

      Leads me to the next thing to try: irregularly-shaped Mentos that would spiral down through the soda, instead of falling straignt down. I assume t

  • This is quite interesting (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2006, @07:46PM (#15469190)
    despite it being a waste of food (is soda and candy food?). These guys obviously put alot of thought into the choreography and timing of their fountain. Kudos. There are two questions I still have:

    1. How much soda did they waste getting it right? and;
    2. Are they doing this anywhere near ants?

  • That... is the coolest thing ever! (Score:5, Informative)

    by HellSpam (692342) on Sunday June 04 2006, @07:46PM (#15469191)
    I've seen lots of cola and mentos experiments, but that was definitely the best one. Anyone who want to know how this works: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/000 00109 [stevespanglerscience.com]

  • News for Nerds... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bsdluvr (932942) on Sunday June 04 2006, @07:46PM (#15469192) Homepage
    ...Stuff that matters.

    By the way, does the diet coke react more in combination with the mentos, or are they just afraid of gaining weight?
  • Or those of you who have never seen Ocean's Eleven, the real Bellagio Fountains [google.com].
  • .. to 'A flock of seagulls' music.

  • Name of the song? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antdude (79039) on Sunday June 04 2006, @08:06PM (#15469276) Homepage Journal
    Does anyone know what the name of the song and who made it? I like it.

  • Pretty cool, but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr2cents (323101) on Sunday June 04 2006, @08:34PM (#15469381)
    Ok, the experiment is a nice one to add to the list, but it's hardly "the coolest experiment ever".. I fondly remember two tricks when I was at college:

    1: put some hydrocloric acid in an empty (plasic!!) soda bottle, add some aluminum foil, close bottle, throw away.
    The bottle will start to expand and blow up making a very loud bang.

    2: stack a tealight on top of two other tea lights, making a small pyramid. Light them and wait until the top tea light starts to fume and then the entire surface will burst to flames. Then, carefully throw a small amount of water in the top candle. You'll get a huge ball of fire 2 meters high. Nice way to make clear why you should never throw water in burning deep fryer.

    Warning: these experiments are quite dangerous, so be careful, don't put your head above the tea candles, make sure you're at least 10 meters distant from the bottle, never use a glass bottle, think it through before you begin. Use common sense.

    Any more cool DIY experiments anyone?

    • Before I forget... (important) (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mr2cents (323101) on Sunday June 04 2006, @08:48PM (#15469416)

      If you want to repeat the experiment with the hydrochloric acid: don't get near to the bottle, even if it doesn't seem to work. The aluminum and the acid produce an exothermic reaction that goes faster and faster as it heats up. So at first nothing much seems to happen, but once the acid gets warm, the reaction goes a lot faster, adding much more heat, making the reaction go faster etc.... You don't want a bottle with steaming hot hydrochloric acid exploding in your face!!!

      Also, the gas after the explosion does open up your sinusses, but I don't think it's healthy :-).
      [ Parent ]

    • Re:Pretty cool, but... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Masato (567927)
      1: put some hydrocloric acid in an empty (plasic!!) soda bottle, add some aluminum foil, close bottle, throw away. The bottle will start to expand and blow up making a very loud bang.

      ACK! Hydrochloric acid? That sounds like a Darwin Award waiting to h

  • What about Carbon Aerogel? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bananatree3 (872975) on Sunday June 04 2006, @08:50PM (#15469421)
    from the eepybird website:

    " If you have a liquid that is supersaturated with gas (like soda, which is pumped full of carbon dioxide), a nucleation site is a place where the gas is able to form bubbles. Nucleation sites can be scratches on a surface or specks of dust - anywhere that you have a high surface area in a very small volume. That's where bubbles can form."


    Call me crazy, but what about using small bits of carbon aerogel? I know its expensive, but with 600 m^2/g [wikipedia.org] of surface area, it would be a perfect canadate!



    • I don't think it really matters, but the zeolite used in sorbtion pumps has a surface area of almost 1000 m^2 for every cc. A very small amount of this stuff, no one will notice is is missing, and there are nucleation sites galor. It might even sink to t

  • Slowed the video down to sync it up? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vistic (556838) <vistic@asu . e du> on Sunday June 04 2006, @09:32PM (#15469588) Homepage
    The video [youtube.com] on YouTube...

    I was wondering, the jet from the bottle actually doesn't last very long. And the jets seemed in sync with the music. And the jets lasted quite awhile (except for the big burst at the end of the video).

    It makes me wonder if they did this at normal speed to a sped up version of this song... and then slowed the whole thing down to sync it with normal speed music... so the jets seemed to last longer?

    Pretty clever and skillful stunt.

  • Good for Teaching Kids (Score:3, Insightful)

    by natedubbya (645990) on Sunday June 04 2006, @09:42PM (#15469626) Homepage
    I can see why most of you find this pointless for slashdot, but this soda/mentos idea has been going around teachers and science education lesson plans [wetheteachers.com] for a while now. It's very popular with science middle school teachers and it gets your average apathetic 12 year old interested in science. So maybe not great for grown up slashdot, but it's still great nonetheless. Would be a great video to show in classrooms.


  • Osama squirts (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tablizer (95088) on Sunday June 04 2006, @11:20PM (#15470112) Homepage Journal
    Oh shit! Now they are gonna ban coke and mints from airline flights.

  • welcome to the new MPAA business model (Score:3, Interesting)

    by m874t232 (973431) on Monday June 05 2006, @03:41AM (#15470779)
    This video content doesn't really fall under "science" (white labcoats don't mean it's "science").

    It really is more an example of the kind of new business models for video: low cost productions, free distribution, and web supported advertising. And the content is of a form where nobody really would want to bother redistributing it without advertising.

    It's actually not all that different from the original business model of network television, although it is arguably a more "creative" and "innovative" than a lot of what we get on television today.

    • Re:What.... what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2006, @09:19PM (#15469527)
      I think they should have a section called "Slow News Day".

      Yes, god forbid people have fun whilst experimenting. Perhaps you are not familiar with the links between creativity and scientific breakthroughs?

      I forgot this is stone cold /. news for the serious.

      [ Parent ]

        • Re:What.... what? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by God'sDuck (837829)

          Yeah, okay. And what part of creating a fountain in Vegas out of Coke and breath mints has anything to do with scientific discovery, exactly?
          for the doers, nothing; for the watchers, nothing; for the watcher's children who run out and try it for themselves

    • Re:What.... what? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hdparm (575302) on Sunday June 04 2006, @11:03PM (#15470044) Homepage
      Can be science, can be fun, can be both - as tagged.

      I used to do this some 30+ years ago, while in primary school. Every day after school few of us would go to the corner shop, buy coke and pepermints and organise competition - everybody drops a mint into the bottle and whoever spils the least amount of coke, gets the next bottle purchased by the others. It's possible not to spil coke at all but terribly hard. We used .33 l bottles, though.
      [ Parent ]

    • Nope (Score:5, Informative)

      by delirium of disorder (701392) on Sunday June 04 2006, @11:12PM (#15470086) Homepage Journal
      Although Rummy is just about as evil as they come and the FDA approval process is unfair, I still trust Aspartame. Aspartame itself is not a "poison that attacks nerve ends"; although its components may have some health effects in huge amounts, typical food consumption is safe. It is approximately 180 times sweeter than sugar, so diet foods and beverages only contain a small amount of it.

      Approximately 10% of aspartame (by mass) is broken down into methanol in the small intestine. Most of the methanol is absorbed and quickly converted into formaldehyde. Some scientists believe that the methanol cannot be a problem because: (a) there is not enough methanol absorbed to cause toxicity, (b) methanol and formaldehyde are already a by-product of human metabolism, and (c) there is more methanol in some alcoholic beverages and fruit juices than is derived from aspartame ingestion. (Wikipedia)
      See also: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1218049 4&query_hl=2 [nih.gov]

      Phenylalanine is an amino acid commonly found in foods. Approximately 50% of aspartame (by mass) is broken down into phenylalanine. I can't see why this would be a bad thing. Phenylalanine is used in living organisms, including the human body, where it is an essential amino acid. Phenylalanine can also be converted into L-tyrosine, another one of the twenty protein-forming amino acids. L-tyrosine is converted into L-DOPA, which is further converted into the neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. Research indicates that Phenylalanine can be an effective part of an overall program to fight chronic pain and depression in some cases, including the mood swings of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Some sources contend that it can increase energy and mental alertness. So it's a natural amino acid that can function as a CNS stimulant. It can't hurt you any more then the caffene already in the pop, as long as you don't abuse it. (Even stronger CNS stimulants like amphetamines are fairly safe as long as you use a small enough quantity of them and maintain a normal sleep cycle).

      Aspartic acid is an amino acid commonly found in foods. Approximately 40% of aspartame (by mass) is broken down into aspartic acid. A lot of FUD has been drummed up about aspartic acid being an "excitotoxin". I really is just one of the 20 natural proteinogenic amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins.

      "...since aspartame is broken down into these components before it is absorbed into the blood stream, aspartame in its initial form does not have the opportunity to travel to target organs, including the brain, to cause cancer." (American Cancer Society)

      Animal studies HAVE found aspartame to be cancer causing, but no major human study has. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/265559_soda 05.html/ [nwsource.com]
      [ Parent ]
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