Event: Diet Coke and Mentos Fountain

What happens if you take a large bottle of Diet Coke and mix in some Mentos mints?

YouTube has lots of clips of the ensuing chemical reaction but its not the same unless you do it yourself. So I bought 14 bottles of the fizzy stuff and more sweets than would be good for any health conscience person and set to work on creating a fountain, or two.

All I now needed was a few volunteers and as luck would have it, my family is full of enough game-for-a-laugh individuals. First we wanted to try a couple of tests:

• Just drop several Mentos into a bottle of coke
• Drill a small hole in the lid, wire some Mentos together under the lib and drop them with the lid firmly on.

It was clear that the hole in the lid allowed the pressure to build up and rewarded us in a significantly better fountain. This was the way forward.

Bottles distributed amongst the team, we got to work with the drill and a range of different detonation mechanisms.

Dad and Chelsea went for smashed mints hoping for greater surface area. Scott went for dropping a full tube and screwing the lid on quickly. Mark went for multiple holes on the side of the bottle. Dan crammed loads of mints on a threaded necklace. Adam had a simple “grenade pin” release on some threaded mints. I went for the swinging bottle.

Andy should probably not join the bomb squad. While loading his mint detonator a simple slip of the hand cause a premature explosion. Thanks brother for spraying Diet Coke over all my tools and camera ;)

Then we lined up and triggered them together. Oh what fun as we watched the various approaches succeed or fail disastrously (Scott … oh dear!!!).

Not all fountains are equal

Dan didn’t give up on a failed bomb and gave it a good old shake to get it going. And was rewarded with a Coke shower to everyone great amusement.

The conclusion is simple: Do it!! But the more you can set off at once the better. The climax is only a few seconds long but the design and build is all worth the effort.