Ever since he saw a video about making rockets out of Mentos and Diet Coke, James has pretty much been obsessed. We found some Coke on sale, he borrowed some Mentos from work, and we even made a special trip to Home Depot for PVC pipes in preparation for the big day.
The next step was finding partners in crime. We chose our friends Jarom and Stephanie Brown because a) we like them. b) they're not afraid to get sticky. And c) every time we see them a new invention seems to hatch (i.e. giant hamster ball that propels itself across the water).
Jarom and James got busy making a PVC pipe launcher.
Trying to speed the hot glue cooling process in the freezer...
...and with a fan
We had to drink 2 liters of root beer during dinner to get another bottle top of the right size...just to make sure the aerodynamics were just right. Stephanie made some nice cardboard fins to help this puppy fly.
We drove around for quite a while trying to find a place to make our mess where we wouldn't get arrested. We settled on a field by a high school. There were sprinklers going all around us, so we hoped that the coke smell would be gone by morning. The first attempt proved to be the most successful, flying up about 15 feet.
The boys were completely soaked in artificially sweetened stickiness.
We tried smaller bottles to see if they'd fly higher. No luck. Our parking lot got its share of sticky puddles though.
So Coke and Mentos rockets = big mess and not a lot of flying. I'm sure this is only our maiden voyage though. Watch out Utah!
You should see the 'Mythbusters' segment about this. It's hilarious! You had fun AND made a mess - all in a day's work, eh? :)
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