July 11, 2007

Geyser Tube Toy Helps Set New Mentos Geyser World Record

Dropping a roll of Mentos into a bottle of soda used to be something that kids did for fun. Now adults are getting into the act. I opened my e-mail and received these cool pictures from the organizers of the event that took place on July 10th in Flower Mound, TX. Representatives from the Guinness World Records certified the record-setting effort, which went off at 6:30 pm inside the Circle R Ranch Rodeo Arena where 850 independent sales representatives from Books Are Fun, a Reader's Digest Company, simultaneously dropped Mentos into 850 two-liter bottles of soda using the Geyser Tube Toy. The previous Mentos geyser record was set on May 24, 2007 in Cincinnati, Ohio when 504 Mentos-and-Coke geysers were set off. Watch the Video: The Largest Number of Simultaneous Mentos Geysers Please remember that you're looking at 850 screaming adults... not kids... running away. Yes, learning is fun for people of all ages.

February 14, 2007

Spangler’s Geyser Tube Strikes a Chord with Media

After two straight days of demonstrating the Spangler Geyser Tube at the New York Toy Fair, my voice is gone. All in all, we launched over 500 two-liter bottles of diet soda in the giant plastic tubes to demonstrate how a science experiment turned into an Internet sensation... which lead to the creation of a new toy. Prior to my voice disappearing, I spoke with Greg Sandoval, Staff Writer at CNET News.com, about toying with the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment.

February 13, 2007

Toy Fair 2007: It’s Cool to Like Science

The opening day at Toy Fair was amazingly busy for those companies who had cool science product, according to a staff writer from CNET News.com. Caroline McCarthy writes, "Amid the madness of the 2007 American International Toy Fair here, a somewhat unexpected trend was visible: apparently, science rules." Caroline stopped by the booth yesterday to ask a few questions about our new Geyser Tube toy and, more importantly about general trends in science education. She points out some very interesting observations in her article - teachers should read this. Despite the perpetual debate over whether the United States is losing ground in raising the world's best scientists, today's pop-culture climate is remarkably conducive to making science trendy. The ubiquity of science kits and gadgets at the Toy Fair made me wonder--is science actually cool now? Even YouTube has its influence. Be Amazing, a toy company that specializes in chemistry sets and licensed products from Steve Spangler Science, was drawing massive crowds with … (more...)

February 11, 2007

Launching Soda Geysers Indoors

Who said mixing Mentos and Diet Coke was only an outdoor only sport? When the show management at the Javits Center found out that I wanted to launch 2-liter soda geysers on the floor of the trade show at Toy Fair, they responded with a New York "no way". The solution was to build 18 foot clear plastic tubes to contain the eruption. That's the first hurdle. Now all we need to do is to move 480 bottles of diet soda into the Be Amazing Toys booth. The show opens in less than 12 hours.

January 15, 2007

Mentos Geyser Hits the Classroom… But Some Teachers Don’t Get It

It has the potential of being the most popular science fair project of all time. The Mentos Geyser is definitely fun to watch, but some teachers are missing the opportunity to use the activity to teach science. Over the last few weeks, I've received emails from students explaining that their teachers are forbidding them from doing the Mentos Geyser as a science project. Why? The common response is... "there's no science to blowing up pop." What? How did these teachers miss the rich science content that oozes from the bottle with every eruption? Combine the strong science with the student's motivation to want to use the scientific method and you've got an amazing activity. Brian Rice, a math teacher at Gwinn Middle School in Michigan, recently used the Mentos Geyser as a great teaching opportunity. As one of the experiments, the middle schoolers measured how high pop would spray when a Mentos candy is dropped into the pop bottle. In one day, eighth-grade classes and some seventh-grade classes conducted the Mentos and pop experiment with the objective to see whether different types of pops have greater eruptions. They ended up testing a total of 44 different varieties, ranging from … (more...)