fun with diet coke and mentos

last weekend, we celebrated Liz's birthday with a potluck. one highlight was this amazing birthday cake that dan made. it is the Black Pearl Layer Cake found on epicurious.com here. It's from the person who does Vosges Haus-Chocolat. mmmmmm.

It appears that adding mentos into a 2L bottle of diet coke (has to be room temperature) will result in a huge fountain. This picture was taken with cold diet coke so it didn't shoot up as high as the room temperature diet coke did. There are apparently thousands of youtube videos showing variations on this theme. I've been present for two separate occasions in which we experimented with several different sodas and mentos, varying the temperature, size of the soda bottle, amount of mentos, and even trying to screw the top back on before the explosion just for the heck of it. :) If you're ever bored, now you know what can do in the alley...!