Do you know about Coke and Mentos?

[ChristianBecker]

Well, do you?
I'm asking because it is popping up now and again. Some people asked me about, told me about, there even is a Myth Busters episode about it.
Well, I do know the phenomenon, but for reasons I'll disclose later, I'd really like to know if you've heard of it before, when, and if you don't mind to tell me, how (like did someone tell you that a friend did it or did they plainly tell you that there is an interesting reaction if you put a Mentos into a freshly opened bottle of Coke#).

You can try this at home, but preferably outdoors.

[chris.ph]

thay did a few experiments on mythbusters about this

[Tonyblack]

It was THE big thing on the Internet a couple of years ago. YouTube had dozens and dozens of videos of people's experiments. I was never interested enough to try it. mainly because I wouldn't waste the money on either coke or mentos.

[Bickaxe]

First heard of it when I saw that clip with them 2 guys synchronizing it to music. Saw the mythbusters episode a while later and actually tried to recreate some with varied results.
Tried cheap own brand supermarket coke and diet coke as well as bigger brands. The full fat Coca Cola version performed better.
Tried different types and quantities of mints. Mintos worked best.
The dropping mechanism seemed to be the key to making it work though, spent ages drilling holes in mintos but it was a fair few years ago now so that's all I can remember.

[Tonyblack]

[Tonyblack]

Good grief! That video was posted on YouTube in 2006. Was it really that long ago????

[Dotsie]

I've heard about it, but never wanted to get covered in coke myself.

[Sister Jennifer]

I think someone showed me that youtube clip. I remember people asking me if I'd looked after anyone who'd tried swallowing mento's and coke and burst their stomachs . No I hadn't.

[Del]

I have kids! Of course they tried it. With various results. Heard about the exploding stomach thing and as a good parent I have terrified my children with it for years (dont believe it myself)

I was more worried about the "licking the freezer" thing myself..... have had to unattach two kids (the other one got herself off)

[Quatermass]

Yeah, I saw it on MythBusters. I used to experiment with salt in Coke, though. I always thought it was a chemical reaction of some kind, but it seems that salt does something similar to Mentos, something to do with nucleation or something.

[jtrhoades]

I have kids! Of course they tried it. With various results. Heard about the exploding stomach thing and as a good parent I have terrified my children with it for years (dont believe it myself)

I was more worried about the "licking the freezer" thing myself..... have had to unattach two kids (the other one got herself off)

It is damn near impossible to explode a stomach, it has 2 built in pressure release valves.
They'd likely just puke all over, and even that's unlikely as most of the CO2 is released very quickly upon entering the stomach, and it's immediately diluted as well so getting the reaction from the mentos(which you'd have to swallow whole) is also unlikely.

[Cohen]

I first saw it on 'Volcano Live' several weeks ago, pretty impressive

[raptornx01]

yeah, saw it on mythbusters. they used that stuff several times. something about little pits in the surface of the thing causing the reaction (it had nothing to do with the ingredients, but the shape).

[ShadowNinjaCat]

I saw that youtube video.That's how I first heard of it.

[ChristianBecker]

OK, since no one has posted for a while I'll sum up:
91% of you have heard about it before, only 9% (2 people) haven't.
A lot of people have seen the MythBusters episode, some had heard of the Mythbusters episode, some have seen it in some video clip on the internet.
However, the phenomenon seems to have become a matter of interest post 2000.

Now, the reason I asked if you knew about it was
a) I wanted to know if it is really so well known or if I just know the "right" kind of people
b) I wanted to know if anyone has heard of it before 1996/7

But why did I want to know these two things? Because I suspect I started it. At least I accidentally discovered the mentos fountain when my class and I came back from a school trip. I had some rolls of mentos and was just munching away on one when a friend sitting next to me opened a fresh bottle of coke (I think it was not coke light, though). I said "Want a mentos?" and without waiting for an answer and without thinking what I was doing I dropped it into the bottle. It was very surprising. I'd never have thought it would gush like that. Of course I wanted to create a little foam, but not a huge fountain. He was drenched in coke afterwards, another friend of mine who sat in the row before him had coke down his neck and back, I was more or less dry ( ).
I hadn't heard of it before, and only some years after that I began to hear about it again from people that were not either on that trip or at my school. Since none of you seem to have heard of it before early to mid 2000s, I guess it could've been started by me and then spread over the internet.