Irregular asked:
This is a brilliant question I just thunk up. Usually, Diet Coke is used with Mentos for making fountains and rockets. But what happens when you have Diet Pepsi, Coke Zero, Pepsi One, or any other diet soda instead? Does it have to do with the ingredients, and the amount of each in each soda? What difference will it make when they are substituted? Try it.
This is a brilliant question I just thunk up. Usually, Diet Coke is used with Mentos for making fountains and rockets. But what happens when you have Diet Pepsi, Coke Zero, Pepsi One, or any other diet soda instead? Does it have to do with the ingredients, and the amount of each in each soda? What difference will it make when they are substituted? Try it.
Larry
The key is that it must be a diet drink with carbonation.
The sugar in the mentors causes the carbonation to come out of solution creating the gas pressure.
drinks with sugar have much less carbonation and can not be released so quickly.
Jo
The Mentos explosion reaction is more physical than chemical. Diet soda is used because the dissolved sugar in regular soda tends to keep the Carbon dioxide in solution.
The Mentos tends to break the surface tension and also provide a physical surface for the reaction
H2CO3 (aq) — H2O (l) + CO2 (g)
to go very rapidly. Any carbonated diet soda will work.