NullRoot wrote:You remember pop rocks, don't you? Little crackly things that are supposedly lethal with Coca-Cola?
Mentos?
A Diet Coke and Mentos eruption (also known as a soda geyser) is a reaction between the carbonated beverage Diet Coke and Mentos mints that causes the beverage to spray out of its container. The candies catalyze the release of gas from the beverage, which creates an eruption that pushes most of the liquid up and out of the bottle.
]]>You remember pop rocks, don't you? Little crackly things that are supposedly lethal with Coca-Cola?
Mentos?
]]>Intriguing... I have often wondered what would happen if you froze super-carbonated water into ice cubes. I suppose the result would be similar to these pop rock things.
Question: Do these inventions have to have been successful, or can failed inventions also be included?
]]>1. The Lamb Water Gun Knife
Water Gun and Knife in the same sentence. It's a dead giveaway, huh?
Invented by F. Gilbert Lamb, this invention in it's simplest form is nothing more than a long tube. At one end, you have a lattice of razor sharp blades. At the other end, you have a high pressure water hose. What goes in the tube? Potatoes.
That's right. Potatoes. This invention is now the worldwide industry standard for convenience food manufacturers. First purportedly tested in the parking lot of his plant in Weston, Oregon, the Lamb Water Gun Knife fires what are basically raw french fries out at 117 feet per second. Absolute genius.
2. Pop Rocks
You remember pop rocks, don't you? Little crackly things that are supposedly lethal with Coca-Cola?
They basically take the ingredients (all of which are various forms of sugars) and melt them down in a sealed vat. This vat is then forcefully pumped full of carbon dioxide at a pressure of 600 pounds per square inch. As the mixture cools, the high pressure CO2 is trapped inside the sugary mix, which is then crushed into little pellets.
When you stick them in your mouth, the saliva melts the sugar, weakening the walls of the trapped bubbles until they can no longer contain the pressure of 60 atmospheres! The result is a fizzly, crackly party in your mouth. The person who first thought "Why don't we force really high pressure CO2 into liquid sugar?" was a chemist at General Foods, the legendary William A Mitchell. Also known for his role in the invention of Tang.
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