Kinetic Energy of a single Mentos in Diet Coke

In this experiment the goal was to perform an experiment involving the conversion of energy stored in Mentos and diet soda into kinetic energy, and compute the amount of kinetic energy obtained. Document your experiment and method. What I learned from executing the experiment and watching myth busters is that the majority of the reaction is dependent on carbon as well as the action of nucleation in the mentos. The initial height was where I set my axes in my calculations and in the experiment I showed how the diet coke sprayed up about 8 inches as a result of putting only one mentos inside.
I was able to find the kinetic energy by first realizing that an object that goes up into the air gains potential energy as it loses potential energy so the energy balance can be created as follows
.5mv^2 = mgh, which can be rearranged to find the velocity at the maximum height traveled by the diet coke streamline: v = sqrt (2gh). From this, I inserted the velocity I found into the formula for kinetic energy, 73.6 J. I had to convert some units so that everything matched as well.
Here are the values I ascertained:
•hi = 12 inches
•hf = 20 inches
•Δh = 8 inches = .2032 meters
•g = 9.817 m/s^2
•m = 1.3 ounces = .0368 kg
•v = 2 m/s
•KE = 73.6 J\
Analysis!
A brief analysis of the results may be necessary to explain what happened to my second attempt to the experiment. After I inserted one mentos into the diet coke and watched that explosion I decided to put the rest of the mentos (8 total) into the same bottle and see if it went up higher. To my initial surprise, as I inserted all eight mentos, I was waiting in vain for something to happen. I discovered that nothing happened and it made sense but it was quite astounding to imagine. The single mentos that was inserted into the bottle underwent a process known as nucleation- if you have an electron microscope you can see little pores all around the coating of the mentos where at each pore a carbon dioxide molecule has the ability to turn into gas. Since theres millions of those reactions taking place and since the mentos falls to the bottom of the bottle, thats where you get the famous fountain. Further, this also explains why adding more mentos to the old liquid mixture wont cause another, bigger reaction to take place. It wont cause any reaction because, believe it or not, the single mentos already reacted with the majority of carbon molecules so theres no more left to turn to gas. This single mentos was able to not only turn all of the carbon molecules into gas by nucleation but it also has a kinetic energy of 73.6 J as the diet coke burst from the spout.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Diet
• Coke
• and
• Mentos

[ryker666]

@sweendiz no, not fags, nerds. :P

[sweendiz]

wow fags

[J3nst3r]

itz a kool idea!!!