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Kevin Sturge sent me a link to the Eepybird’s video (embedded below) showing a Bellagio-like display featuring Diet Coke and Mentos in lieu of traditional fountains. It was hilarious. Apparently I’m one of the last to know about this as the Eepybird video has been seen 6 million times already. A Google search of “Diet Coke Mentos” yields 3.8M results. Heck, it was even on the David Letterman Show. Clearly, I’m late to the party!

The Eepybird Video (101 2 liter bottles of Diet Coke and 523 Mentos)


Want to see this on your iPod? Your iPod Movies has over 100,000,000 files.

Seeing this got me thinking, what causes this reaction? Carbonation? Is there some special ingredient?

Now serendipity steps in, I sit down to watch some TV last night and lo and behold the MythBusters are queued up on my ReplayTV with an episode devoted to, drum roll please, Diet Coke + Mentos! What are they setting out to do?

• Find out what causes the reaction (just saved me a few hours of tinkering)
• Compete to see how high they can send a stream of Diet Coke into the air (saved me a few hours of fun)
• Build a Diet Coke/Mentos powered rocket (you’ll have to watch this to see the results)
• Discover some more interesting home concoctions (I liked the methane soap bubble trick)

It turns out that Diet Coke and Mentos were made for each other. The carbonation does play a big role, but it doesn’t work alone. I encourage you to watch the MythBusters episode for details.

Spoiler alert (if you are going to watch the episode, stop reading now.)

The active ingredients are: Diet Coke has aspartame (artificial sweetner), caffeine (rush), and phosphoric acid (a preservative) in addition to carbonation that aid in the reaction. Mentos have gelatin, gum arabic, and many, many microscopic nooks and crannies that aid the reaction. The reaction itself is termed as nucleation, that is the extraction of the gas en masse in a short time period which aids the energy release.

Go out and have some fun, try it yourself!

Mythbusters on my iPod? Your iPod Movies has loads of movies, music, and tv shows.


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Technorati Tags: Diet Coke Mentos | Nucleation | MythBusters

I’ve made several references to the amount of time I’ve spent traveling in the past few years. When I mention places I’ve been people who don’t travel frequently tend to say things like “Oh, that’s sounds great, I wish I had the opportunity to do that.” And you know what, I agree if the travel is reasonably limited. If the travel is frequent, it feels more like a curse than anything else.

A peculiar habit I formed was keeping the ticket stub from each segment flown. Once home, the stub was impaled on a wire holder. Here’s a snapshot of my ticket stub collection from the past 5 years – business travel mind you, not personal.

5 years of business travel on a stick


Here’s a slightly different view, a layout of the stubs on the floor


Before you take the time to count them, there are 224 stubs. That’s an average of nearly 1 flight per week over 5 years. No wonder I feel tired when I think about travel. Consider, 1 whole year of that time I took only 1 flight due to budget constraints and travel restrictions, it’s even worse compressed into 4 years.

I’m not complaining, clearly there are people who travel more than I. But, it’s interesting to see such a physical representation I think.

Technorati Tags: Travel | Ticket Stubs | Collections

Tuesday in Brazil, a workman trying to free scrap metal from a rocket propelled grenade managed to kill himself, wound a colleague, and destroy his workshop. The explosion apparently was the result of using a sledgehammer (yes, he was beating on an item intended to a) propel itself at high speed toward a target and b) explode) to break open the shell.

Garden variety rocket propelled grenade


Garden variety hand propelled grenade


Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this sort of accident has happened with live ammunition. The Darwin Awards, the ultimate recognition for mankind’s varied and stupid ways to thin the gene pool, has many different stories. The one that leapt out at me was the gentleman who intended to use a live grenade as a weight for a chimney cleaning scheme and attempted to weld the grenade to another piece of metal with predictable and spectacular results.

Gallows humor aside, this is a sad state of affairs when economics make it worthwhile to risk one’s life for a bit of scrap metal.

Technorati Tags: Grenade | Darwin Awards | Scrap Metal

Yesterday I ran across two interesting bed-related stories, one about the resurgence of bed bugs in the US and the other about a designer’s dream for a floating bed.

Common bed bug


Uncommon floating bed


I’m not sure I ever want a floating bed and the bed bug thing makes me think twice about hotels these days…..

Technorati Tags: Floating Bed | Bed Bugs | Hotels

As referenced in a previous post, there are a bunch of interesting materials being developed that are ending up in apparel. The examples already given are the “buzz off hat” with insect repellent embedded in the material and the smart-kini (ok, I just made that up) sensor bikini that provides the wearer information about UV exposure.

Phase change materials are a distinct class that do something interesting and valuable. I was talking to a colleague about this recently and she indicated that she’d love to have clothing where the sleeves would “grow.” The example she provided was that it’s warm in the Denver summer, but if you change elevation much it gets cold fast and that she’s constantly carting around extra clothing for this reason. Well, phase change materials don’t “grow”, but they do have the powerful property of being able to absorb, store, and release heat by changing from solid to liquid and back again.

PCMs, in combination with micro-encapsulation, have made these heat absorbtion, storage, and release properties available for use in fabrics. Several companies now have make this technology available to manufacturers including Outlast, Microtek, and TCP Reliable. Here are some examples:

• Gloves
  
• Shoes
  
• Shirt
  
• Linens
  
• Beer label (think cold beer, warm hand)
  

From my perspective, the most interesting thing about PCMs is that they are now appearing in common use everywhere. Rather than the PCM being the focus, it’s a shirt that keeps you cool in the heat and warm in the cold. Pretty cool stuff.

Technorati Tags: Geek Chic | Smart Clothes | Smart Wear | P.C. Material