Science Experiments

Question: Chemistry Mentos Project Help!!!?

We have a major chemistry project, and mine is on the explosion of mentos in dietcoke/coke.

–I tried testing my experiment and its not working. I added 5 mentos to a small amount of soda and it does nothing/.
Whats wrong???

–We are testing what other candies/food will make make it explode/fizz too. We have some products…but if we can’t get the mentos to work, how are the others going to work.
Yess — I am using Diet Coke
And im aware that the arabic gum in the mentos interacting with the soda makes it fizz.

Answer: There are sites on the Mentos mint which actually cause the reaction to occur. In order for the reaction to occur, these sites must be exposed, so the Mentos mint that you use must be unglazed (wax free on its surface). The site is where carbon dioxide is formed and given off. So, the drink must originally be carbonated, and unopened. Are you doing the experiment in the original drinks bottle, which is as little shaken as possible? These two are vital! The Mentos mint itself can be inserted through a tube fed into the bottle.
The actual chemical within the Diet Coke (by the way only Diet coke works as it contains less sugar probably, I do not know the actual reason for this), is suprisingly the Caffeine, and 1 of the acids (either Ascorbic acid or Phosphoric acid) is what causes the effervescence reaction.
EDIT: You can do some research into this matter. The MythBusters team actually did this experiment, and so you can look for it on Youtube to observe how they did this experiment.

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