Mentos Geyser Tube Featured on Food Detectives

Ted Allen, host of Food Detectives on the Food Network, featured a segment using our Mentos Geyser Tube toy as a trigger device for their exploding soda segment. The producers did a nice job of explaining the science behind the eruption and even shared a cool variation of slowly lowering several Mentos into the bottle using a piece of wire. The demo showed why the Mentos have to quickly sink to the bottom of the bottle if you want to get a huge eruption. In their explanation, the microbiologist expert said that diet soda is used because the aspartame weakened the surface tension of the liquid which aided in the eruption. However, we know from experimentation that regular soda works well, too. Does regular sugar also weaken the surface tension? Dropping Mentos into plain seltzer water produces almost no eruption. Does this suggest that the surface tension of the liquid is higher in the plain seltzer water than it is in regular soda or diet soda?

You see… that’s why the Mentos soda geyser keeps showing up time and time again. The exploding soda is cool, but trying to uncover the real science behind the reaction always leads you yet another question… and another reason to drop more Mentos into soda.