Mentos Geyser

Have you ever put Mentos in Diet Coke before? It's a great experiment that never gets old! But which type of cola product works best? In this experiment, we found that diet cola (we used Publix brand) worked better than regular. Reason being is that it contains a lot of artificial flavoring. This, combined with the porous nature of the Mentos, plus the CO2 in the drink, and you have the perfect equation for a a giant explosion! Try it at home with different brands of diet drinks. You can even try it with zero calorie drinks and compare the reaction to diet drinks. See if it makes any difference!

The Solar Bag

I got a little behind on updating the blog! Before Spring Break we learned about Solar Bags. These bags are actually solar powered! They are capable of flying so high, they can actually be sent into space! NASA has used these Solar Bags (along with some other high tech equipment) to send to Mars! Our Solar Bag didn't go to Mars, or even break through the atmosphere (we did tie it on a string like a kite) but we did get it to fly high up in the sky.

We determined the bag is black to absorb the UV rays. Once air gets in the bag, the rays heat up the air particles in the bag and make them move very fast. This causes the bag to rise. Check out some pictures!