Set Up
1. Obtain a straight ladder and place it against a tree or house so that it is safe to climb. put a piece of tape on the ladder every 6 inches. NOTE most ladder rungs are 12 inches apart.
2. Put the ladder up against the tree so that it is as perpendicular to the ground as possible.
3. Put the bottle on the ground 6 inches in front of the middle of the ladder.
4. Adjust the camera and tripod so that the bottom of the bottle to the top of the ladder is visible.
5. Roll one piece of paper into a cylinder with a 3/4 inch diameter and tape the edge. hold an index or playing card over one end of the cylinder. Put 6 Mentos into the cylinder. NOTE use a new cylinder each time.
ReactionNOTE read this section before beginning the experiment
1. One person should be in charge of putting the Mentos into the bottle, 1 person
should be in charge of opening the bottle, and one person should be manning the camera.
2. Begin recording
3. Get ready to move quickly. unscrew the cap, position the cylinder & index card
over the bottle neck and remove the index card by sliding it out from underneath
the cylinder. Quickly move the paper cylinder once the Mentos have fallen into the soda.
4. When the reaction is finished, stop recording.
Repeat steps 1-9 until you have collected enough usable data, using a new bottle of soda each time.
NOTE you will probably need to do this experiment a few times to perfect step 3 of the Reaction.
Data Collection
1. Load the video clips of the reactions onto a computer.
2. Watch each reaction in slow motion, and record the height of the reaction every second. There should be a counter on your computer screen.
3. Plug these points into the LIST (under STAT) in your graphing calculator. Time should be under L1, height under L2.
4. On your calculator go into CALC (under STAT) and select several different graphs to test your reaction data.
5. To determine your best fit equation, find the function that has the regression closest to 1.00.
