Coke-Mentos Eruption- An Experiment to do!!!

I happened to read this from a forward sent to me by a friend, "Don't take Coke and Mentos together". I thought here's another of those hoax messages and did a Google search like I always do... and lo-aho, its true indeed!!!!

Aim of the experiment: - Creating an exploding geyser from soda.

Materials for Experiment: - A 2 Litre Diet Coke Bottle and a pack of Mentos.

Reacting Agents :- (Assumed) CO2 gas, caffeine, potassium benzoate, aspartame (commonly known under the brand name of equal, its an artificial sweetener) of the coke and glucose syrup, dextrin (a carbohydrate formed by the hydrolysis of starch), coconut oil, gelatin and gum arabic (also known as gum acacia, a natural food stabilizer found from acacia tree) found in mentos.

Procedure: - Choose some outdoor place where there's enough space for you to run away. Take the whole packet of mentos, drop into the diet coke bottle, shake well, and run away... There's an instant geyser like effect seen.

Properties: - A common backyard experiment nowadays and popularized by Eepybird, who do it for entertainment on a big scale.

This is claimed to be a physical reaction than a chemical one. Now to start with what happens before the mentos is dropped? Water usually resists the expansion of bubbles in soda. It takes a lot of energy to break that bond/mesh formed by water molecule around each bubble for the existing bubble to expand or for two bubbles to combine into a big one.
A mentos candy has soft chalky structure and the reaction is on account of its physical structure. When the candy is dissolved in the soda, the gum arabic and the gelatin reacts with the soda and reduces it surface tension. This breaks the water-mesh to release the bubbles and form new ones. As the reaction progresses, more and more bubbles and formed similarly which gives rise to this "geyser effect" or the "explosion". Mentos candy has numerous microscopic pores and depressions on its surface which forms a site for nucleation to take place. The physical structure of the mentos is an important factor since the experiment did not provide similar effects when a soft, plain and wax coated candy was used for the same experiment.

Conclusion: - The experiment is a result of the nucleation sites which form on the mentos candy and contributes to the formation of a large number of bubbles breaking the surface tension of water.

NOT RECOMMENDED TO BE TRIED WITHOUT ADULT SUPERVISION; ONE WHO KNOWS SCIENCE REALLY WELL... ;)

Why do friends forward emails?

Today I got a forwarded email from a friend of mine. Talking about forwards, I hate those good luck and bad luck ones. I am not bothered about all these things, nor do I believe in bad luck affecting my very existence; but how do I react people send me chain messages saying that "if you don't forward it to 5 or 10 people within the next 2 minutes, you will have bad luck for the rest of your life", or that "Microsoft/ Bill gates has just announced the most dangerous virus released till now" or recently "Orkut/ Yahoo is going to delete the address if you do not forward this mail"; not to mention using God's pictures and other rare photos to pass on this information?

I don't want to offend people, but I get to irritated seeing such junk mails filling my inbox, that once I wrote a very rude mail to my friends through 'Orkut messages'; got many responses to that too. But there are some of my "dear" friends who do not seem to get a clue even after seeing such mails from me, I can plead, beg, order, shout, what else? When nothing works, endure it. Just keep deleting such mails, hoax messages and chain messages, everything deserves to be in the trash box of my email, or even permanent deletion.

Whenever I get a forward (depending on my free-time available) I do a google search to see if there's any website which has information about this. If its a hoax, I get some link to 'urban legends'; am not sure of the website, but it just takes a minute in google. The funniest part is that these forwards would have changed in name and form, new virus names, often more powerful curses for not forwarding... So I suggest that my dear friends please take a minute (it takes less time than to enter all your friends' email addresses) before forwarding to people and think about the time you are wasting, yours and others. Obviously if its something really important, would it not come in cnn or bbc or atleast local paper headlines. I don't know whether its just me, or do others also get irritated sometimes seeing their inboxes with junk forwards, the first thing in the morning? And, would even friendship get affected because of these annoying mails? Something to think about...