1. Very slowly and carefully, open a new bottle of colorless soda.
2. Tilt the cup and slowly pour the soda down the inside of the cup to make as few bubbles as possible.
3. Place a straw in the soda and look at the straw from the side.
4. Take the straw out of the soda and put a pipe cleaner in. Look from the side to see if bubbles also form on the pipe cleaner.
5. Now take the pipe cleaner out and place a Mento in the soda. Watch the Mento from the side to see what happens.
Bubbles will form on the straw and very quickly and completely cover the pipe cleaner.
The bubbles are made of a gas called carbon dioxide. The soda company puts carbon dioxide in the soda to make the soda fizzy.
Also, the things you put in the soda aren’t really as smooth as they look with just your eyes. If you could look at the straw, pipe cleaner, and Mento with a super-strong microscope you would see that they have tiny dents, scratches, and bumps on them.
The carbon dioxide molecules collect on these places and form bubbles which rise to the surface.
