For the first time in a few years I put on a week long science camp for third, fourth, and fifth graders at the start of June. We did several activities each day, many of which I've posted on this blog before. I'll be posting several blog entries detailing the activities of this camp and the things we learned. The first activity of the week was dropping Mentos candy in different varieties of soda and watching the pop explode out of the bottle!
The demonstration is very simple. Take approximately six pieces of Mentos candy and drop them in an open two liter bottle of soda. The candy reacts with the soda, forcing the soda up and out of the bottle. I like to turn this into a science experiment by first asking the kids to analyze the nutrition facts on the soda labels and make predictions as to which sodas will explode to the highest heights and why. They focused on the sugar and sodium content. Then we go out and test our predictions with various varieties of soda. Typically the diet brands explode higher. In our collection of soda, diet A&W root beer exploded the highest and Mountain Dew was kind of a dud.
Then we came back together and discussed how well our data matched our predictions. It's a great example of how science works. Sometimes our predictions are spot on and other times they are not, in which case we learn new things! In my class, students were very surprised that the Mountain Dew did not work very well. It came up out of the bottle, but not very high and basically just dribbled out. Interesting!
Click the link below to see a video I made back in 2012 in which I tested this demonstration with my kids.
Exploding Soda Pop
Exploding soda never gets old! My oldest daughter was helping out with this camp and she was commenting on differences between this camp's exploding pop and what we did at home a few years ago. My youngest daughter was a participant in the camp and the smiles it brought to the her and the other kids shows just how awesome this demonstration/experiment is! Like I said, exploding soda never gets old!!!
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