Cola Fountains!

One of our previous experiments was making cola fountains.

Items needed:
- A one or two litre bottle of diet cola
(You may also try other carbonated drinks, but diet cola is less sticky)
- An A4 piece of paper
- Some sticky tape or similar
- Two skewers
- 1 packet of mint Mentos
- Safety Goggles

Optional Items:
- Paper rocket or other light object

Step 1:
Use the paper and the sticky tape to make a tube that has the same diameter as the top of the cola bottle.

Step2:
Insert the skewers horizontally through the lower end of the paper tube approx 2cm from the end. These will stop the Mentos from falling all of the way through the tube.

Step 3:
Put the mint Mentos into the tube so that they sit on top of the skewers.

Step 4:
Screw the top off the cola bottle and secure the skewered end of the paper tube to the opening using tape. (If you are going to attempt to launch a rocket or other object, now is the time to sit it on top. Make sure the Mentos do not get into the bottle yet!)

Step 5:
Now for the fun part! Quickly pull the skewers out of the paper tube so that the mentos fall into the bottle. Quickly run away from the bottle and out comes a fountain of cola!

How it works:
The rough surface of the Mentos provides a large surface area, allowing more CO2 to be released from the fizzy cola. This quickly creates more bubbles than the bottle can hold! (Rock salt also works instead of Mentos, but not as well.)

Fountain making equipment.

The experiment.

Preparing the experiment.

The fountain does not work very well.

Now it does!

I hope that you have enjoyed the blog entry and if you try the fountain experiment, good luck!