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."
...of course, now I've suddenly become very thirsty.
--
Music should be free
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
A number of different groups of people seem to have attempted it as the different versions available on Google depict.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"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!"
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?
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
...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?
So, I am sitting here at work, with a can of Diet Coke and a packet of mentos. Mentos Diet coke /Looks around, quickly drinks diet coke and swallows mentos
hehe
I remember when I was younger, my brother and I would collect some empty softdrink bottles, put a bit of water in them, connect them to an air compressor and shoot them into the air. The reverse (shooting liquid into the air) looks like just as much fun.
What are you talking about? It's articles like these that make me glad I read Slashdot. Learn something useful everyday. :)
I've seen this trick done before, but never on such a grand scale! I hope those were waterproof lab coats...
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Or those of you who have never seen Ocean's Eleven, the real Bellagio Fountains.
True, this is something well suited for digg, not slashdot. This and the short summaries that have been popping out lately.
Cool, though.
oh come on, this has nothing to do with the posted videos.
.. to 'A flock of seagulls' music.
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 make it explode.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Does anyone know what the name of the song and who made it? I like it.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I required a plugin to view that movie, But found it here with a youtube video
Best coke and mentos experiment
http://www.digg.com/links/The_Extreme_Diet_Coke_Me ntos_Experiment
me jumping with kites I make...
That's an awesome soundtrack. Is it original?
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
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?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
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
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
" 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!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBkQe_lwak
I thought this is about (Score:1, Flamebait)
I thought this rating and Troll were supposed to be used when I'm trying to start a flame war.
I'm just being dissapointed that putting mentos in coke is what Slashdot editor consider stuff that matters.
PS: Don't mod me down further, you don't... ya know... wanna find mentos when you open your next coke. It'll be a shame.
The site also answers everybody's big question: Is it dangerous to drink soda and eat Mentos?
"Well, a lot of the fizz goes away as you drink. Then when bubbles are released in your stomach, your stomach can expand a bit, and it also has ways of releasing excess pressure. Do not, repeat, do not be stupid and test the limits of your stomach. Don't even think about it."
Make sure you check out the cautionary tale they recommend.
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.
...why you can no longer buy Spearmint Mentos in the U.S.
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.
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.
Hard to say. Give it a shot and post back here with your results. If we don't hear from you in an hour or so we'll figure it's not safe. And should things not go well ... rest assured that your contribution to the totality of human knowledge will be greatly appreciated.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
same here.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
news for nerds...
Opera seems to have no problems with it. The only logical choice in this situation is to acknowledge Firefox's shortcomings, and upgrade to the better browser.
Because having a link to the article the summary was lifted from doesn't count as attribution
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-145368437 748873531
Not a problem...I'm using a slightly older version (1.5.0.2) of Firefox with mplayer-plugin on a Slackware-based system and I had no such issues. It seems your milege may vary.
Can be science, can be fun, can be both - as tagged.
.33 l bottles, though.
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
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.
= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1218049 4&query_hl=2
a 05.html/
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
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_sod
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Oh shit! Now they are gonna ban coke and mints from airline flights.
Table-ized A.I.
What's weird is that I just did this with my daughter (10) yesterday morning, just for fun. I think she enjoyed the Bellagio version quite a bit more because or our "experiment".
I personally prefer this video that dispenses with a common Coke and Mentos myth.
"Although Rummy is just about as evil as they come and the FDA approval process is unfair, I still trust Aspartame."
.gov site on the subject when "evil Rummy" is calling the shots here.
:-)) is concerned, I'll agree that any beneficial effects there are only marginal.
... even when exposed to aspartame. Add to that the obvious lack of interest in conducting such studies.
It's your body. If you would stand in line for a free, totally unnecessary radiation treatment thinking that it isn't a big deal and could even be healthy, that's fine. I would still go out of my once to tell you that what you're about to do is the worst thing you could do to yourself but if you in turn started citing studies by radiation equipment manufacturers and others that have a vested interest there, then I would just smile politely and walk away. You can do whatever you want to yourself for all I care and you don't have to listen. That's your privilege. However that privilege ends where other people get hurt because you've been proselytizing to them.
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)
Right! People have been _extremely_ rarely observed going into convulsions and dying on the sidewalk all because of a scant few hundred micro- to milligrams per kilogram of body weight of Formaldehyde, Methanol and all the other wonderful metabolic by products. They die in hospitals after years of consumption and exposure, cancer surgery, radiation and chemical treatment. You (and whover you copied that text from) are patently leaving out the dimension of time here.
See also: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1218049 4&query_hl=2 See also a
Phenylalanine is an amino acid commonly found in foods.[...]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).
Right. As a matter of fact Phenylalanie (Aspartam) does have analgetic (painkilling) properties. I wonder if Paracetamol (Tylenol) tasted just as sweet whether people would be gurgling that instead? As far as the stimulating effect on the CNS (Central Nervous System
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.
Interesting. Did you know that some of the most deadliest toxines in nature such as the venom of the Black Mamba are really just proteins and building blocks of proteins?[..] Animal studies HAVE found aspartame to be cancer causing, but no major human study has. Lab rats live a maximum of 1.5 - 2 years (provided they are not forcefed with aspartame). Humans have a considerably higher life expectancy
But that's one
...but do the Diet Coke + Mentos fountains run linux (yet)? I'm guessing at least one of the guys in the video does (or, at least they both use Macs).
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Heres what happens when you try to mix the soda and mentos inside your belly: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869424433 8798619086
This is fantastic. This morning's news makes me happy I've stuck through with Slashdot.
Thanks, guys!
Take off every 'sig' !!
Wouldn't the Benny Hill theme be more appropriate for this video??
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.
I am sure the sales of Mentoes and diet Pepsi or Coke are going to spike after this video spreads on the InterNet. A trick to be shown at all the family picnics this Summer.
I had to find the video in the Firefox cache to view it.
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
I hope they realize that no woman with an hour glass figure...oh, what the hell am I saying...no woman with a pulse would consider going all the way with these geeks.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
As long as it's not as 'in your face' as in recent Bond movies and information-to-ad ratio stays within a certain margin I'm actually ok with it - there are all sorts of marketing people and politicians already trying to mess with my mind; I think it might even help building up an immune system against that sort of thing ;)
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
you too can create chemiluminescence!! no need for those commercial light sticks!!! mix hydrogen peroxide and bleach (perchlorate) --- this will make singlet oxygen and dimers of singlet oxygen will form and emit red light, you can easily see it in a darkened room, use the highest percentage peroxide you can find, this is (relatively) safe as long as you don't drink the bleach................the mentos/diet coke thing isa hoot to do with kids
Wouldn't it have been faster, and cheaper, to just drink the bottle you bought, rather than dropping a peppermint into it? ;-)
Did the video creator get mod points? How is this off-topic? Its pertinent information about the performance of this site, which many people seem to be experiencing problems with.
Same deal with the hydrochloric acid and the tinfoil in the 2L bottle, but even more fun:
Before inserting the foil and acid, securely duct-tape a large rock or brick to the bottle. Insert the foil and acid, quickly cap the bottle, and toss into the middle of the nearest small lake/retention pond.. From what I can find online, standard 2L soda bottles can withstand >200 psi, so it's quite a pop!
Wait for it, wait for it.....*deep thud* *ground shakes*, BOOM!
*Disclaimer - Horrible for lake ecosystem, I'm sure.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I can't see the vide in my browser, anyone else having such issues? If it works with mplayer what's the URL to the video?
I am supposed to say something ambiguous and smart here. I'll leave that to everyone else...
Oh come on. That's like saying, "Wouldn't it have been simpler to just eat your sandwich than squishing the bread into a doughy ball to throw at your friends or scuplt dinosaurs out of?" or "Couldn't you have just walked around the block instead of racing your neighbor across the junkyard with the mean pitbulls?" or "You know your wouldn't have broken your leg if you hadn't been climbing that tree in the first place."
Totally irrelevant to being a kid.
Anything that has to do with exploding food always reminds me of Swedish Lemon Angels -- before all the copies of the recipe on the internet spoiled the joke. I actually passed the recipe to my sister. Apparently it had the desired effect because she still won't give me any details. :)
I Am Not An Entomologist, but my wife found this ant bait recipe online:
I thought ants liked "sweet" and any sweetener would do, but anyway my wife took the recipe literally and it worked fine...
:/
Interesting, indeed. Which makes me wonder: can anyone get their hands on a microscope, and provide a surface picture?
"Good news, everyone!"
Isn't that Terry Benedict's place?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
But i think someone should re-read the "stuff that matters" part of the slogan. I don't want to see /. slip into YTMND
I hear version 2.0 of this hybrid motorcycle will scrap beans and use a mix of Diet Coke and Mentos. 0 to 100 in 1 second!
Fiendy switched from the high glucose version (high levels of sugar act neurotoxic too incidentally) of the beverage to the high aspartame version. The Caffeine content did not change. I'd suggest you read what people have say before giving them a kneejerk reaction.
Trust me, this is by far the quickest way to drink a coke.
This reminds me of a game I used to play called Dr. Pepper rockets. Essentially, take 500ml of Dr. Pepper, shake it up for 10 minutes, then slam it down on the ground. The cap will burst off, and your Dr. Pepper bottle will soar like a rocket, with sticky cola as its exauhst. But I have to admit, I had no idea mentos did that to coke.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
My friends brought be to Vegas for my bachelor party last September and in a drunken stupor, decided it would be "hilarious" to jump into the Bellagio fountain pool buck naked. Fortunately for us, we didn't get busted by anyone, the 100-or-so spectators around the fountain were very supportive, and we caught it all on my friend's cell-phone camera. Unfortunately for Ryan (3rd man in the pool), he got a liver infection that nearly killed him after gulping down a mouthful of that vile, recycled, bacteria-ridden water.
It is indeed kind of late for this but still: They switched from the regular high glucose beverage to the aspartame version. I don't see the levels of caffeine intake changing much here. This is not the way to get Aspartame off the hook.