Slashdot Mirror
Bellagio Fountains Recreated with Mentos and Coke
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."
" 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 of surface area, it would be a perfect canadate!
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.
The video 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.
news for nerds...
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not that Kari isn't appealing, but that's just sad. Anything for a couple bucks I guess.
Is it just me, or did she look a lot better on the show than on these pictures?