Not to be out-done by Europeans, students at Male High School in Louisville, KY, set off 300 more geysers than the previous record-breaking effort just a few months ago in Belgium. School officials thought exploding Diet Coke and MENTOS would be a great way for students to blow off a little steam before finals and celebrate a great school year. The students were recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the new official record holders with 1800 geysers. All proceeds from the event were donated to the Ronald McDonald House. Congrats to Male High School students… now who will be next in the race for a new geyser world record?

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According to Guinness World Records, the 973 Mentos-powered soda geysers launched at Arena Park in Cape Girardeau, Missouri is an official new record. Jason Lindsey from KFVS-TV in Cape Girardeau shared his goal with us for setting a new world record back in August and needed just a few Geyser Tubes and Mentos® chewy mints to make it happen. "Contributing the materials was the easy part. Our hats are off to the team at KFVS-TV and Jason for setting the record and convincing 1,000 people to show and and get wet," says Carly Reed from Steve Spangler Science.

Whenever a big geyser launch like this one makes the press, there's no end to the number of people who complain that this is a huge waste of candy and soda. Let me respond by saying this… YOU COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT! The goal is to get people of all ages engaged in doing a science activity, thinking about the science behind the reaction, testing a variation on the reaction, and ultimately sharing their excitement about doing a science experiment. Honestly, name another time or event when a thousand people got this excited about doing a simple science experiment!

For the cost of a bottle of soda and a roll of chewy mints, a teacher just might pique a kid's curiosity and get them to show more interest in science. Who knows? Ask any teacher what kind of price tag he or she would put on that kind of motivation.

Your thoughts? 

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Tune into Food Network’s Unwrapped to get a peek inside the Spangler Science labs as Steve shares the science behind the Mentos Geyser all of that exploding soda. Back in December, I mentioned that a crew from Unwrapped on the Food Network wanted to get the real scoop on the popular Mentos and soda reaction. The crew spent an entire day grabbing the reaction from every angle and trying to understand how all of those tiny bubbles produce such a huge fountain of soda. The episode is scheduled to air on September 24, 2007. Consult your local listing for time and channel.

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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 GeysersÂ

Please remember that you’re looking at 850 screaming adults… not kids… running away. Yes, learning is fun for people of all ages.

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Thousands of science teachers found their way to St. Louis for the 2007 National Science Teachers Association convention, and we wanted to make sure they had something to take back to their students. So, we loaded our trucks with experiments and products from the website along with 5,000 rolls of MENTOS stuffed into plastic test tubes and headed for the Gateway City. We were fortunate to have 14 teacher ambassadors from the Hands-on Science Institute join us in the booth to each share their favorite science activities. Aside from 500 bottles of Diet Coke and a mountain of MENTOS, all eyes were on the 18 foot tall soda eruption chamber. We were demonstrating the new Geyser Tube by triggering a MENTOS geyser as fast as we could set-up a launch (about every 2-3 minutes for 3 full days). At the end of the convention, the soda was gone, the rolls of MENTOS were in the hands of 5,000 teachers, the truck was cleaned out… and we all had a blast. It’s back to the classroom for the 14 ambassadors to start working on cool stuff for next year’s NSTA in Boston.

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