Science Experiment: Make a Diet Coke+Mentos Rocket

If you had a jetpack, you could take off from your backyard and fly around the neighborhood, scaring crows and dropping high-altitude water balloons on your friends. It would be awesome. But let's say you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a jetpack. You can still have your own rocket. All you need is a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke and a roll of Mentos candy, plus some tape and scissors, to build and launch your own rocket 10 to 12 feet into the air (or maybe more!). It's a cool way to learn a little physics and chemistry, and to make a sticky mess in the process.

Why Mentos and Diet Coke?

You may be surprised to learn that the idea of dropping candy in a bottle of soda to create a fizzy spurt of suds isn't new. Your parents may have even done it when they were your age, using M&Ms in their favorite soft drink. But a few years ago, someone — nobody's sure who — discovered that if you drop Mentos candy into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke, a spectacular stream of sudsy brown liquid will blast high into the air. Pretty soon, kids and teenagers all over the world were trying it for themselves. In fact, students at a college in Latvia even set a world record by setting off 1,911 Diet Coke+Mentos geysers in unison. Other folks even decided to control the explosion and turned Diet Coke+Mentos into an aerial rocket. How'd they do that?

Build Your Own Diet Coke+Mentos Rocket

Here's how it's done. Be sure to follow all the instructions carefully!