Plop, Plop - Fizz, Fizz

If any of you ever make it out this way (Portland, Oregon) and you have young kids with you, a great place to spend the day is at OMSI, which stands for "Oregon Museum of Science and Industry". We purchased a family membership to it at the beginning of summer, and man-oh-man has that ever been a great deal. For a little more than what it would have cost to go a single time, we are able to go as many times as we like for a whole year. So far I think we've gone at least six times and perhaps a few more than that. Lots of hands on experiments to do and plenty of fun things to occupy the mind with.

Last week we went to go see a planetarium show and as we were waiting for the next one to start, we looked outside and caught a glimpse of a guy setting up what I instantly recognized as the "Mentos meets Soda" experiment. Anthony had never herd of doing that before and Lisa, although knowing about it, had never seen it done in person.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, I''ll give you the quick version. Mentos are a candy of sorts. In my humble opinion they taste kind of like chalk dust mixed with peppermint and then compressed into a gacky tasting tablet. I truly think the following experiment is all they're good for, but I digress...back to the story. Take a large plastic soda bottle (high acid content) then drop in about a half a dozen Mentos (High carbon dioxide content) then run like hell!

The photos below will give you a pretty good visual of what to expect.