Nothing has attracted viewer attention quite like the on-air experiments we’ve conducted the past few days with Mentos and Diet Coke. It all started Wednesday, when Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Rod Antone was making his nearly daily appearance to talk about what’s in the paper that day. One of the articles on the front page had to do with experiments and internet videos involving people putting Mentos mints into two-liter bottles of Diet Coke. The result is — hopefully — a big fizzy fountain spouting out of the bottle.
We, of course, had to try it out for ourselves. That very morning, we immediately dispatched one of our crew members to a nearby convenience store to pick up — what else? — a pack of Mentos and a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. We jury-rigged, with great haste, the experiment, which involved drilling a small hole in the bottle cap, and a small hole in the center of six Mentos. The Mentos were then strung onto a straightened paper clip, which I bent at the bottom so the candy wouldn’t fall off. The top of the paper clip then went through the hole in the bottle cap, and then I’d put the cap on the top of the bottle, pull the paper clip, at which point the Mentos would fall into the Diet Coke and fun would ensue. At least, that’s what was supposed to happen. As it went, the Mentos fell in before I could screw the cap back on, but there was quite a fountain anyway.
We tried again the next day, with a more sophisticated set-up put together by our morning engineer. Basically, it was a long, stiff wire in place of the paper clip, with a washer tied to the end of the wire as the trigger. This allowed me to put the bottle cap on with a smaller chance of the Mentos falling in prematurely. It worked well, except that the hole in the bottle cap may have been too small; we had a long-lasting, tall, but rather thin spraying fountain this time.
Over the past few days, we’ve had quite a few e-mails from viewers who were wondering: A) what the heck we were doing, or B) if we’d seen such-and-such video of the experiment from such-and-such Web site. Without making an already-long post even longer, we’ll pass along the Web site that was mentioned in the Star-Bulletin article, as a starting point if you’re interested in trying this yourself, and to find out why it seems to work. Just promise you won’t perform this experiment indoors.
Aloha,
Ben.
ben@kitv.com
We had a blast with the folks from the Pacific Fleet Band’s “Dixie Express” on Thursday. Great music for the upcoming 4th of July, which is one of their busiest times.
