Mentos Diet Coke Hoax – Can You Explode by Drinking Diet Coke and Eating Mentos?

There is an urban myth spreading via the Internet that a little boy in Brazil died after eating Mentos and drinking Diet Coke.  The claim is that the Mentos released all of the carbon dioxide from the soda, the boy’s stomach swelled up and he exploded. While it sounds great on paper or as part of a viral e-mail that hit your inbox, nothing could be further from the truth.

Eating Mentos and drinking diet soda might make you burp, but you’re not going to puff up and explode. When you drop Mentos into a bottle of soda, it’s the tiny craters or imperfections on the surface of the Mentos that serves as a meeting place for the bubbles of carbon dioxide gas dissolved in the liquid to collect. Since the Mentos are heavy and rest on the bottom of the bottle, the expanding and escaping bubbles push the liquid out of the bottle, creating the popular soda geyser effect.

If you’ve ever tried to chug a can or a bottle of soda, it probably one took about four seconds before you amazed everyone with your super burp. Your mouth and throat provide plenty of opportunity for the carbon dioxide gas to attach onto some nook or cranny and escape before settling into your stomach. Once the soda hits your stomach, it’s just a matter of seconds for the burp to escape. Couple this with the difficulty of trying to swallow Mentos, allowing the soda and candy to mix, and you’ve got a dud for you imagined to be a dirty trick to play on a friend.

The writers at snopes.com posted a great article on the Mentos and Diet Coke reaction and even reference us as part of the scientific rationale for why the rumor isn’t true.

But this hasn’t stopped a flurry of funny videos surfacing on Youtube. Super Burp has to be one of my favorites…