Mentos Volcano

We had a BLAST making Mentos volcanoes! Maddy has been into volcanoes lately, lava in particular. She keeps asking me to tell her more about lava, and really, I'm spent. We checked out books from the library and still she wants to know more. As part of our lava love I made her a couple of Mentos volcanoes.

What is a Mentos volcano? If you haven't done this, you have to try it once just for fun. Keep the idea in mind for your next barbecue or family event where kids are involved, they will love it.

Materials:

1 roll of Mentos (use the whole roll)
1 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke.

Diet Coke has been proven as the best soda for this project.

Use a piece of paper to roll the Mentos into a column. Keep it loose enough so they will drop out quickly. Hold them upright on a small piece of cardboard or cardstock (I used a greeting card).

Unscrew the cap on the Diet Coke. Place the cardstock with the Mentos stack over the hole on the bottle.

Be prepared to move FAST. You have to drop and RUN because the reaction happens immediately.

Slide the card out while holding the column of Mentos and keep your face out of the way (I learned this the hard way). RUN.

The Diet Coke will shoot 10 feet in the air!
It's so cool. Diet Coke is not sticky so you won't have an ant colony making it's way to your driveway. It's easy to clean off your face and legs. :-)

You can even get a little contraption that will hold the Mentos for you and let you run away with a piece of string and pull from a safe distance. It shoots the Diet Coke 20 feet or more into the air. I want one.