davehayes.org

taken from here.

Words cannot begin to describe the awesome eruption that is created from adding Mentos candies to a 2-liter bottle of soda. The eruption is enormous… and so is the learning if you consider the chemistry.

Materials:
A roll or box of Mentos® (candy mints) and a 2-liter bottle of diet soda. Either diet or regular soda will work for this experiment, but diet soda is less sticky when you’re cleaning it up!

1. This activity is probably best done outside in the middle of an abandoned field, or better yet, on a huge lawn.

2. Carefully open the bottle of soda. Position the bottle on the ground so that it will not tip over.

3. Unwrap the whole roll of Mentos. The goal is to drop all of the Mentos into the bottle of soda at the same time (which is trickier than it looks). One method for doing this is to roll a piece of paper into a tube just big enough to hold the loose Mentos. You’ll want to be able to position the tube directly over the mouth of the bottle so that all of the candies drop into the bottle at the same time.

4. Don’t drop them into the bottle just yet! Warn the spectators to stand back. Okay, you’re going to drop all of the Mentos into the bottle at the same time and then get truckin’ (move out of the way… so long… bye- bye… hasta la vista!)

5. It’s just like fireworks on the 4th of July. The spectators erupt, of course, in a chorus of ooohs and ahhhs. Someone yells out, “Do it again” and you do.

How it works:
As you probably know, soda pop is basically sugar (or diet sweetener), flavoring, water and preservatives. The thing that makes soda bubbly is invisible carbon dioxide gas, which is pumped into bottles at the bottling factory using tons of pressure. Water molecules, which are super attracted to each other, cling together and surround the tiny bubbles of gas in the liquid. The bond they form is called surface tension. Surface tension is measured by the amount of energy it takes to break the clinging water molecules apart. It takes a lot of energy! Until you open the bottle and pour a glass of soda, the gas mostly stays suspended in the liquid and cannot expand to form more bubbles, which gases naturally do.

If you shake the bottle and then open it, the gas is released from the protective hold of the water molecules and escapes with a whoosh, taking some of the soda along with it. When you add Mentos to the mix, get ready for an incredible explosive reaction–so explosive that the entire bottle is sometimes emptied of liquid. Why?

Mentos contain sugar, glucose syrup (more sugar), hydrogenated coconut oil, starch, gum arabic, an emulsifier and natural flavor. The gum arabic which makes Mentos chewy, cause the surface tension of the water molecules to break even more easily, releasing more carbon dioxide gas. This effect is enhanced by the fact that, as the candy dissolves, it forms nucleation sites — tiny pits on the surface of the mint where more carbon dioxide bubbles can form. When all this gas is released, it thrusts the entire contents of the bottle skyward, in an incredible soda blast. Hopefully you’ve decided to use diet soda or you may be running for the shower!

this weekend was host to a bit of a debate with some friends, and there was some other discussion today that had me thinking about the authority of men to deal death as a punishment. it is not a pleasant subject to discuss or consider, to be sure. it is not nearly so cut-and-dried as many other subjects in the Bible due to a fair amount of dissonance in the scriptures, primarily between old testament law and some of the teachings of Jesus with a few new testament instances sprinkled about.

basically, my views boil down to the fact that i put a lot of stock in tradition and in the wisdom of my elders – second only to the Word itself, actually. in light of these things, i find fault in the views of pacifism held by a growing number of my contemporaries, both in regards to capital punishment and the defense of one’s self and his beloved. the arguments for each side are tired and i will not at this juncture delve deeply into the topic, because i am still working out many of the details for myself. however, for those of you ashamed to live in a country that will take a person’s life for his transgressions, i hope that romans 13:1-4 can ease your mind in the face of such painful considerations.

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

i’m a network administrator for a small company. i look after a windows 2000 server, a novell server (which will be phased out when we move to windows server 2003) and a linux server in addition to about 40 users on our network using a mix of windows xp, windows 2000 and even windows 98 in a couple instances. i like my users and (i think) they like me. i love my job. i enjoy what i do, i enjoy the people with which i work and i make enough money to enjoy my life comfortably when i’m not at work.

i’m lucky because, especially for the field of information technology, my work environment tends to be relatively stress-free and laid back. our servers aren’t typically problematic (knock on wood), my users don’t tend to break things and when they do it’s usually very easy to fix. that’s not say that i’m immune from the usual set of IT related annoyances. sure there are a laundry list, but there is one thing in particular that is gnawing at me today. i imagine most of you (IT professionals or not) can relate…

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