first-year undergraduate

I first saw the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment during a science fair at an elementary school in 2005, and I was instantly hooked! To perform this experiment, Mentos candies are dropped into a bottle of carbonated beverage; Diet Coke tends to be the beverage of choice. In the video below you can see this experiment play out in slow motion.

Are you familiar with the dynamic density bottle experiment? This interesting experiment was invented by Lynn Higgins, and is sold by various science supply companies.^1,2 Two immiscible liquids (usually salt water and isopropyl alcohol) and two different types of plastic pieces are contained within a dynamic density bottle.

In this post I will explore the chemistry of the Sunflower dye found in McCormick’s Color from Nature food dyes. This is the last in a three-part series in which several experiments and demonstrations that can be done with Color from Nature food dyes are described.

In this post I’ll be sharing a bit about the chemistry of the Berry food color found in McCormick’s Color from Nature food coloring. I will also describe some experiments and demonstrations that can be done using this food color.