Air Cannons, Magnet Motors, and 25 Other Amazing DIY Science Projects
"Voltz and Grobe have deciphered the magic of making viral videos."
—Stafford Green, The Coca-Cola Company
Check out the Coke Zero & Mentos Rocket Car: Mark II.
Driver on closed track. Don’t try this without professional help.
Yes, we ran over a camera with the Coke Zero & Mentos Rocket Car. RIP, noble Flip cam. That explosive power, combined with bad driving, doomed the poor camera.
The music track for this video is Hot Hands by our friends at AudioBody, from their new album We Are AudioBody.
How Does This Work?
This is one not to try at home.
The Coke Zero & Mentos Rocket Car uses a piston mechanism: a six-foot long rod sits inside a six-foot long tube attached to each bottle of Coke Zero. When the Mentos drop into the soda, the pressure tries to push the rod out of the tube. With 108 rods all pushing at once, that gives us a lot of power.
All that power is pushing against a solid wall that's braced by over 3,000 pounds of cement blocks, so the wall won't move, the rocket car will. We get one big push for six feet, and then it’s all coasting from there.
Want to know what makes the soda fly out of the bottle? Will you explode if you drink Coke and eat Mentos? Click here to find out about the power of Coke and Mentos: The Science of Coke and Mentos
Don’t Try This at Home!
Seriously, don’t try this at home. There is a huge amount of power involved, and we don’t want you to get hurt.
What you can (and should) try at home is the Coke & Mentos geyser: you can get your own Coke and Mentos Kit: EepyBird's Diet Coke and Mentos Kit which includes nozzles just like the ones we use in our geyser videos, or you can click here: Make Your Own Coke & Mentos Geysers to learn how you can make Coke and Mentos geysers with stuff from around your house.
Credits
How to Kill a Camera with a Coke & Mentos Rocket Car by EepyBird: Fritz Grobe (the short one) and Stephen Voltz (the tall one). Music by AudioBody.
Filmed in Buckfield, Maine. Thanks to the EepyBird pit crew: Big Dave Tardy, Mike Miclon, Matt Tardy, and Casey Turner. Captured on video by the one and only Mike Miclon, with able help from Shane Miclon, Aaron DeWitt, and Brian Miclon.
The Coke Zero & Mentos Rocket Car: Mark I was welded together using a utility trailer frame and the front half of a bike by the incomparable Nick Salvati, with Mike Miclon jumping in to use the plasma cutter at every opportunity.
And thanks to Coca-Cola Zero and Mentos for making this possible!
