It’s not unusual for our office to get a call or two a week from the media about the Mentos Geyser experiment. Most of the inquires focus on how the reaction works or questions about MENTOS myths. When Tom Whipple from the London Times called, his interest in the MENTOS Geyser focused on the vehicle used to popularize the experiment – YouTube. Here’s the interview from the London Times…
A Lesson in Pure Science…from YouTube
Thousands have watched Steve Spangler’s experiments online. He says it’s the ideal teaching tool for science. Tom Whipple
Steve Spangler was not the first to perform the “Mentos experiment”. It was just that when he did — in his role as a science correspondent on NBC — there was what he refers to as “a perfect storm” of circumstances.
On live TV he put a Mentos mint into a bottle of Diet Coke, waited for a geyser to erupt from the top and watched as the news anchor got soaked. “They tried to fix her hair,” he says, “but it didn’t work.” Crucially, there was also “this little thing called YouTube, that no one knew about”.
We just found out this week that we won the 2008 EduBlog award for Best Educational Video and it’s all because of amazing followers like all of you. When we got the word out that we were nominated for this award, the congratulations came pouring in… and so did the votes. After the dust had cleared, we learned that over 900 supporters voted for our educational videos.
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.
We’ve stuggled with the decision of where to host our science demonstration videos. It really comes down to accessibility and it’s tough to beat YouTube.com So, we uploaded our first round of science demonstration videos on our channel called www.youtube.com/stevespanglerscience Bradley Mayhew is the keeper of our video archive and he’s pretty excited about loading the channel up with some “classics” as he calls them. Some of the videos are old enough that we would need to find special equipment just to play the videos. Bradley shared a few “classic” clips at yesterday’s staff meeting. “You might be able to guess the year (or decade) of the video just by looking at what Steve is wearing… or his hair style.” If you’re looking for a video editor, Bradley’s position at SteveSpanglerScience.com might just come available tomorrow. Regardless of how old they are, I hope you enjoy our growing science video collection on our new YouTube channel.
It’s not unusual for our office to get a call or two a week from the media about the Mentos Geyser experiment. Most of the inquires focus on how the reaction works or questions about MENTOS myths. When Tom Whipple from the London Times called, his interest in the MENTOS Geyser focused on the vehicle used to popularize the experiment – YouTube. Here’s the interview from the London Times…
