The Menthos Myth?

by April
(Lilburn, GA)

A piece of the action

A piece of the action

In seventh grade I created a Science Fair project that wasn't very original, but it did get a lot of laughs. I came close to getting in trouble but I played ignorant.


Did you know that the fizz created by a Menthos candy pebble, when placed inside a 2 liter soda bottle, actually causes some kind of chemical reaction? Well, it does!

I got together with two of my girlfriends and decided to do a very detailed experiment. The quality of of our graphs and research is what saved us from failing. The actual experiment conducted on school property was frowned upon.

If I had it to do over, I would have video-taped the various experiments and played them on a portable DVD player rather than let the explosion happen in the cafeteria. There wasn't an actual explosion, but a mess was made, nevertheless. The fact that putting the candy in the bottle caused a reaction and caused the fizz to burst through the top was very interesting to all the other kids in the class.

The science behind it impressed the teachers. What we did was got several types of soda and several types of candy. We monitored the insertion, the quantity of fizz that was created and the reaction if any.

I always had fun with science and by making learning fun, kids stay interested. You can apply science to everything in life. There is always an experiment to conduct if you put your mind to it.

Barry's Response - I've never done it myself, April, but it might be interesting.

Here, somebody had fun with it:



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starstarstarstarstar 		good
by: Anonymous

good but you need to put about 20-30 menthos to the bottom of a can using a pipe
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starstarstarstarstar 		Just a little note
by: Anonymous

I actually wrote this article so I will say it is interesting ;). I want to reply to the above comment. I should have told you that you have to put in at least an entire pack of menthos (about 20 pieces) to get the experiment to work. Also, you can't just drop them in, you have to put them down the bottle to the bottom with a tube made out of plastc. I used a hose I had been using for my fishtank. Then you get a business card or something and put it on the top of the coke bottle. Put the tube on top positioned just over the opening of the bottle. Slide the card out...And the candy slides in. I think this is very intersting and an experiment everyone can do. I don't think it can be dangerous, really but maybe kids should have an adult around.
Rating
starstarstarstar 		Nice expeirment
by: manish

Tried replicating, but could not. may be some problem.

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Thank you to my research and writing assistants, ChatGPT and WordTune, as well as Wombo and others for the images.

GPT-4, OpenAI's large-scale language generation model, helped generate this text.  As soon as draft language is generated, the author reviews, edits, and revises it to their own liking and is responsible for the content.