Friday, June 5, 2009

the manhattan project: an exploding drink!

everyone remembers the exciting mentos-in-coke explosion videos that circulated a while back, right? (see why the experiment works)

now some clever person has thought of a way to harness this energy long enough to shock and surprise your friends (or enemies) when it releases! introducing the other manhattan project!

the trick is to freeze mentos inside ice cubes so that when the ice melts enough for the little candies to touch the coke in the glass, the carbon bubbles rapidly created on the candy surface form a fizzy explosion in your friend's glass!


admittedly, coke in a "manhattan" might make a pretty crappy drink, but that name is better than highball or cuba libre!

i'm curious if this works though. someone should test the method and record it! would the mentos be visible enough inside the ice cubes to cause suspicion from the potential victim?? i'm not so sure i would be comfortable with white things inside of the ice in my glass, but maybe i wouldnt notice.

3 comments:

Viewtiful_Justin said...

Hi-freaking-larious! I'm going to try this on my boyfriend's 30th birthday party.

I.P. Freeley said...

I rechristen this drink as the "Three Mile Island Ice Tea".

Monkeysnouts said...

Just tried the ice freezing technique. Trickier than expected. I tried layering it into two sections. First I froze a bottom layer of ice, next I placed the mento on the frozen bottom section and added water to the remainder. At that moment, the ice on the bottom melted enough to loosen from the base, floating to the top and kicking the mento to the bottom. I ignored this in the hopes that something magical would happen overnight. It did not. The mentos were at the bottom of all the ice cubes, and had diminished in size significantly. If it had worked, I believe it would have been impossible to see the mento through the ice, the center was pretty white just from the frozen water. However, I do question whether or nor it would work if the mento is dissolved by the amount I noticed. I have always heard that it was the exterior shell that reacted with the diet coke. In addition, the mento needs to be 100% surrounded by ice in order for the timed release to occur. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all for it. Will continue to attempt other methods. Thanks for the post.