In our continuing quest to find interesting blogs and bloggers, we ran into Leah Simmers Photography Blog, where she was capturing her experience with Mentos and Diet Coke. Thanks to Leah for letting us share some her unique geyser pictures here. Check out Leah’s full blog post here. And yes, that is the Geyser Tube she’s using to launch that screaming geyser.

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Robert Woodhead is always looking for a new challenge with his Casio EX-F1 camera. I found Robert’s first Mentos Geyser reaction on Gizmodo using just a roll of Mentos and a bottle Diet Coke. Watching the reaction at 1200 fps is truly amazing. Robert found a willing subject (the kid running from the exploding bottle) and sent us this video. Huge thanks!

If you haven’t seen the Mentos Slow Motion Video from the people at Perfetti Van Melle, watch it! At 2,000 frames per second, you can actually see the carbon dioxide bubbles forming on the nucleation sites.

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Weezer has a new video up on YouTube and guess who’s in it? EVERYONE. Well, every YouTube star you can think of seems to have a cameo, including the EepyBird Guys doing their Mentos Experiment #771. The song is called Pork and Beans and the video is great. Congratulations to Stephen and Fritz (the EepyBird Guys) for hitting a home run with Weezer.

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Who wouldn’t love yet another slow motion video of the Mentos Geyser experiment. Robert Woodhead (I guess I need to learn more about this guy) used the flying soda as the test subject for his Casio EX-F1 camera. The result is some amazing slow motion photography (1200 fps).

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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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If you’ve ever enjoyed wearing a bottle of Diet Coke after dropping in a roll of Mentos, you know that the reaction is immediate. I’ve always thought that it would be cool if you could slow everything down and really look at the reaction. I shared the idea with our friends at Mentos and they shot this slow motion video. There are a few frames where you can see the carbon dioxide gas coming out of solution being attracted to the tiny pits (nucleation sites) on the surface of the mint. For the tech-nerds in the audience, a Phantom 9.0 high-speed digital camera from Vision Research (2,000 frames per second) captured the slow-motion footage.

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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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We’re excited about the official launch of our new Spangler Geyser Tube. Think of it as the perfect Mentos loading device to trigger a 30 foot geyser of soda. Just load the Mentos candies into the tube, lock the nozzle in place and pull the pin. Okay, it’s bes

t to pull the pin and then run away. The Mentos drop into the bottle triggering the reaction and the powerful soda geyser comes shooting out the top with enough pressure to reach an incredible height of 30 feet. Onlookers scream, “Do it again!”… and you do.

The Geyser Tube retails for $4.95 and is currently only available at www.SteveSpanglerScience.com However, as a result of our licensing agreement with the maker of Mentos (Perfetti Van Melle), the Spangler Geyser Tube will be released into mass market distribution (all of the major toy stores, print catalogs and online stores) in June 2007.

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I’ve always been a fan of Apple Computers (now Apple Inc.). From my very first Apple IIe to my current MacBook Pro (and about a dozen in between), these computers and products have helped me and our employees to do some very amazing things over the years. That’s why it was an honor to be invited to visit Apple last week and speak with a group of their employees about my experiences running our business on a Mac platform. During my visit, we also taped some online seminars that will be posted on apple.com/business in the near future.

Okay, the secret is out… we’ve been in business for 16 years and never had a PC in the office. Read the rest of this entry »

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I recently received an email from Mimi Sylvia and her grandson Scott. Mimi (she has been called that since her oldest granddaughter tried to say “grandma” and it came out “mimi”) loves to teach science to her 10 grandkids and says she doesn’t plan on growing up herself anytime soon.

Every summer, Mimi Sylvia and her husband travel to Montana to visit their daughter and her family. Mimi Sylvia says they pack their car full of experiments and crafts. She loves to show the kids that science is fun.

Mimi and Scotty tried the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment and WOW did they make a splash. Scotty outdid his two older sisters and brother.

We were so impressed with the photo she sent, that we had to share! Keep aiming high, big guy!

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