A very common science experiment that I've posted about on this blog before is dropping several pieces of Mentos candy into a two liter bottle of pop and watching the pop explode out of the bottle. The height that the exploding pop reaches varies with pop type, but usually you can get the pop to fly upward 4-6 feet or more.
I recently did a Saturday class for 3rd - 6th grades and as part of the class we did the mentos/pop experiment. Having done this experiment many times I expected typical results. However, we did not get typical results. In fact, every bottle of pop, and there were 8 of them, were duds. The pop barely reached 1 foot above the nozzle. After the first bottle I was a bit surprised, but just figured something was going on with just that bottle. Nope. Same result for all 8 bottles!
So why the big difference? I'm not entirely sure, but I came up with a few possibilities.
1. The pop was flat. A possibility, although unlikely since I purchased the pop that week and bought different varieties.
2. The mentos candy was bad. Again, a possibility, but I just purchased the mentos that week. There's no reason to suspect a candy malfunction. Plus the mentos tasted fine.
3. It was very cold out. I'm not convinced this was the cause, but it's the most likely possibility I came up with. After buying the pop I left the bottles in the trunk of my car. Although my car was sitting in the garage, the temperature dropped to the upper 30's/lower 40's in the garage. The trunk of the car was sitting close to the garage door. With no time for the pop to warm to room temperature, the pop was still cold when we did the experiment.
Was cold pop the problem? I don't know, but it's the one difference between this attempt and previous attempts. Usually I do this in the summer and/or fall/spring with kids. I've never done this experiment when temperatures were this low. So that's my hypothesis. Future tests are needed for confirmation.
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