It’s tough to really demonstrate the Mentos Geyser Tube in an exhibit hall filled with teahcers… until we created the Mentos Geyser Chamber. It’s a plastic box that measures 4 feet square and 7 feet tall. It’s the perfect enclosure to launch off a few hundred Mentos Diet Coke geysers. The only other thing you need is someone to stand inside the box for a few hours. Most of the time, Drew Vriesman is an undergraduate at the University of Colorado, Boulder, studying marketing. But when he puts on his intern hat at Steve Spangler Science, he’s never quite sure what to expect. Drew Vriesman and Taylor Marsh took turns launching geysers at the NAEYC 2008 conference in Dallas. Combined they launched 700 erupting Diet Coke geysers using over 4,000 MENTOS® Chewy Mints. The interns spent about 20 hours in the Geyser Box over three days and entertained (or amused) about 15,000 teachers who stopped by the Steve Spangler Science booth.
If you attended the annual NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) conference last week in Dallas, Texas, it wasn’t hard to find the Steve Spangler Science booth. All you had to do was listen for the shouts of surprise as we launched over 600 Mentos Geysers with the Geyser Tube™ in our own take on the classic dunk tank… the Boy in a Box. It was great to see the teacher reactions when they pulled the string and sent a blast of Coke raining down on our never-tiring Boys in a Box.
As my team can attest, I lost my voice at the conference… just like I do every year… from explaining to everyone who passed by the science behind the Mentos and Diet Coke reaction. It’s important as educators that we don’t just drop some Mentos in a Coke and call it science. The resulting geyser is a great effect, but you are missing the key piece of the lesson. Shoot off a geyser, then listen as your students start to ask questions… “Why does that happen?”… “What if we used more Mentos?”…
If you’ve followed us over the years, you know that NAEYC (the National Association for the Education of Young Children) is the first teacher conference where we introduced the famous Mentos Geyser Experiment. In 2006, we launched 700 geysers in the open air on the trade show floor. The Geyser Chamber made its debut in 2007 to show how the geyser shoots 30 feet in the air. This year it’s Boy in a Box… a clear plastic container measuring 4′ x 4′ x 7′ where geysers fly at the rate of 30 per hour (watch the streaming video). It’s easy to find the Steve Spangler Science booth in the NAEYC exhibit hall - just listen for the screams followed by applause.
The Mentos Geyser made history once again as the star attraction at the NAEYC 2006 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the rumble of the crowd in the exhibit hall, you could hear someone from the Spangler Science booth yell, “GEYSER!” followed by a few screams and cheers of excitement. The “geyser” was actually the eruption of a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke powered by Mentos. As soon as people approached the booth and saw the mountain of soda and the display of Mentos, they knew what could happen… but most people didn’t believe that we would actually launch the geysers from behind the booth. Surprise! Instead of just launching the Diet Coke just for fun sake, we used each opportunity to deliver a quick science lesson and followed it up by putting one of our Geyser Tube Experiments in each of the teacher’s hands. Out of the 11,000 people reported to be in attendance at the event, we personally handed out 7,000 Geyser Tube Experiments (which included a roll of Mentos). We even had a few guest “geyserists” take center stage in the booth and try their hand at a launch. This is not the first time these educators had seen or performed our Mentos Geyser which was featured on stage three years ago in Anaheim, California at the 2003 NAEYC Conference. One teacher commented, “We’ve been doing this experiment for the past three years, and it took the rest of the world this long to catch up!”
It was easy to see that this Steve Spangler session at the NAEYC 2006 Conference was going to be a little different. The stage was filled with the usual Spangler stuff… a vacuum cleaner, eggs, a saw, bowling balls, toilet paper rolls, giant bags, an aquarium of water, a violin bow, plenty of Alka-Seltzer, potatoes, Diet Coke and, of course, Mentos. Even before Bobbi finished the introduction, there were Mentos Geysers erupting and people running! My thanks to everyone who attended my session at the NAEYC 2006 conference in Atlanta, Georgia. You’ll find links to the experiments and activities that I shared during the session as well as a few favorites that didn’t make it into the list of 20 Cool Science Activities Under $20. Click on the link below to download a PDF of the session handout: Steve Spangler’s NAEYC 2006 Handout
If you attended the annual NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) conference last week in Dallas, Texas, it wasn’t hard to find the Steve Spangler Science booth. All you had to do was listen for the shouts of surprise as we launched over 600 Mentos Geysers with the Geyser Tube™ in our own take on the classic dunk tank… 
