346: Diet Coke+Mentos

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Diet Coke+Mentos

Title text: The cola+Mentos trick is up there with corn starch+water (vibrating platter optional) in scientific coolness out of common kitchen supplies.

Explanation

This strip exploits irony using the popular meme of mixing Mentos into a bottle of soda. There was a period of time when a large portion of videos depicting this phenomena floated around the Internet, but the novelty starts to wear off once you've seen a bunch of these. So, you expect the character in the strip to show off the incredible phenomena to his friend, because it's "the coolest thing", but it turns out instead of fizzling Diet Coke everywhere, the friend's father magically shows up (presumably from the dead or from abandonment). That would surely be "cooler" than just some soda reacting with sugars. This hints that the author might consider the fad unworthy of too much excitement, and that he considers people's liberal use of the phrase "the coolest thing" unjustified.

Transcript

Friend: This is the coolest thing. You just drop the mentos in the Diet Coke...

Cueball: Uh huh.

Friend: Give it a moment...

[Diet Coke starts to fizzle.]

[Someone teleports into frame in a magic puff.]

Cueball: D-Dad?

Dad: I'm back, son. We can be a family again.

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Discussion

The title-text reads badly, for me, but indicates that the (traditional) trick as depicted is cool, to the author, along with the non-Newtonian Liquid demonstration. (Although that latter may also have been done to death by virtually every science-for-kids-or-fun TV show that go in for that kind of thing...) 178.98.31.27 03:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)