Soda and Mentos

We had all heard or seen what happens when you mix mentos and diet coke.
We wondered if this would happen with any other sodas.

This was also a good way for us to learn how to link research and background information to our science experiments.

First we did this by looking at the information on this wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_Coke_and_Mentos_eruption

Then we made our hypothesis and made sure it had some of the background info that we learnt from our research or from looking at the ingredients in the bottles.  Here are our hypothesis.

We tested Schwepps Raspberry, lime and lemon, Sprite Zero, Diet Coke and Regular Coke. Here's what happened;

After thinking about our results we linked our research and background information with these and came up with our analysis and conclusion.  These ones below were some of our more effective ones.
They were more effective because they;

• included the results
• talked about their feelings on the matter and the science involved
• linked it back to the hypothesis
• used the science they learnt from their research to comment
• put in ideas for further experimentation and wonderings.

When writing your analysis and conclusion in your science fair it would be a good idea to include these things.

Latham;
Sprite zero came first, diet coke second, regular coke third and the schwepps flavours last equal. I wonder if it was because the sprite was mixed after the other drinks? I wonder if it would make a difference if we used a whole pack of mentos for each drink.

Vinnie:
I was very disappointed because I was looking forward to the big explosion but it was pretty small.  I think this had to do with the kind of bottle or because the drinks were not that cold. Also, I was wrong about my hypothesis and was pretty surprised when the sprite had a big explosion.

Mathew:
When we did the experiment I was quite shocked that the sodas didn't go as high as I would've imagined. I was expecting the diet or regular coke to win from what I have researched. The schwepps drinks did not go extremely high because I think the amount of Co2 which the mentos pores had did not have enough to catalyze. I was kind of expecting the sprite to go high because of the lack of sugar in it and the amount of carbon dioxide. I thought the schwepps wouldn't make an effective explosion because the have more flavour than fizz.

Caitlyn;
The sprite zero was the biggest to explode, 2nd was the diet coke and they were the drinks with the least sugar. So to conclude I think the less the amount of sugar the bigger the explosion.

Rubana;
The diet coke came second and the sprite came 1st. I think it was something to do with the amount of sugar in the drink.  Next time we should try a different variety of drink or putting it in different temperature, making it hot or cold. Also, maybe the amount of fizziness that came out of the schwepps was different from the coke brands and sprite. The schwepps ones also had different bottle shapes.