Diet Coke and Mentos

A Soda Geyser (alternatively Diet Coke and Mentos geyser or Mentos eruption) is a reaction between the carbonated beverage Diet Coke and Mentos mints that causes the beverage to spray out of its container. The gas released by the candies creates an eruption that pushes most of the liquid up and out of the bottle. Lee Marek and "Marek's Kid Scientists" were the first to demonstrate the experiment on television in 1999.Steve Spangler's televised demonstration of the eruption in 2005 went viral on YouTube, launching a chain of several other Diet Coke and Mentos experiment viral videos.

In the 1980s, Wint-O-Green Life Savers were used to create soda geysers. The tubes of candies were threaded onto a pipe cleaner and dropped into the soft drink to create a geyser. At the end of the 1990s, the manufacturer of Wintergreen Lifesavers increased the size of the mints and they no longer fit in the mouth of soda bottles. Science teachers found that Mint Mentos candies had the same effect when dropped into a bottle of any carbonated soft drink.

Lee Marek and "Marek's Kid Scientists" performed the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1999. In March 2002, Steve Spangler, a science educator, did the demonstration on KUSA-TV, an NBC affiliate, in Denver, Colorado. The Mentos Geyser Experiment became an internet sensation in September 2005. The experiment became a subject of the television show MythBusters in 2006. Spangler signed a licensing agreement with Perfetti Van Melle, the maker of Mentos, after inventing an apparatus aimed to make it easier to drop the Mentos into the bottle and produce a large soda geyser. Amazing Toys, Spangler's toy company, released the Geyser Tube toys in February 2007. In October 2010, a Guinness World Record of 2,865 simultaneous geysers was set at an event organized by Perfetti Van Melle at the SM Mall of Asia Complex, in Manila, Philippines. This record was afterwards beaten in November 2014 by another event organized by Perfetti Van Melle and Chupa Chups in León, Guanajuato, Mexico, where 4,334 Mentos and soda fountains were set off simultaneously.

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