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The Ban on Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments (2006) (Humour!)
Dropping a Mentos mint into a bottle of Diet Coke turns the bottle into a fire hose as the Co2 is released instantly and forces the drink out in a ferocious spray. An arms race has now started (see portent.org article) in producing increasingly spectacular videos of the reaction.
New research by the Dept of General Chemistry Research and Phyics at Leyton University (London) has shown that each bottle releases half a ton of co2 into the atmosphere when a Mentos mint is dropped in to it. Professor Simon Hieronymous-im-Todt, head of the department, in a research paper that makes grim reading showed that the cumulative effect of all the Mentos/Diet Coke experiments was releasing such a volume of co2 that it was accelerating the pace of global warming. He predicted a 2 degree rise in temperature within 12 months unless all such experiments were stopped.
"Look how few bubbles are emitted ven you consume the drink as it's meant to be taken. That's just a small amount of carbon dioxide released. Now drop von of those verdamt mints in ze bottle and it reacts quicker than a Muslim to a Danish cartoon. He later added "I of course intend no disrespect to members of any faith of course." After receiving 47 threats of beheading over the comment. He also added "Ven you see the finished video, it looks as if it vorked first time. Like vuck it does. Using a complicated statistical formula based upon stochastic processes, I haf estimated that it vill take 5.7 attempts on average to get a perfect video. Zose Eppybird guys used 4,823.5 Mentos and 1,127 bottles of Diet Coke to get zat experiment 214 right. Who vill save us from zuch madness!"
The British Goverment was first to react. Gordon Brown promised that he would tax all sales involving both Mentos and Diet Coke. "There is no finer way to save the earth than by taxation", he declared. The Met Police commissioner joined in and declared that all his officers would issue ASBOs to anyone caught in possession of both Mentos and Diet Coke. "It's a small minority who must be taught that this behaviour is unacceptable. I find this particular combination hard to swallow. The Met is tough on co2 and tough on the causes of co2 and this is a hate crime against all of us.". The Government immediately passed a new bill that mandated compulsory recording of all incidents of possession of both Mentos and Diet Coke, to be included in the information recorded in the National Identity Register (The database behind all ID cards in the UK).
Internationally, both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth were quick to condemn the "Diet Coke/Mentos arms race", calling it a "threat to all humanity" and demanding a boycott on selling both Diet Coke and Mentos at the same time. Comedian Mark Thomas swung into action by posing as a grey market "Diet Coke" importer. He located experimenters, then "named and shamed" several. He followed up by thwarting a number of experiments, supplying relabelled Pepsi instead of Diet Coke. Together with several of his coterie, several experiments were raided and sabotaged by drinking the contents of the bottles. Three saboteurs were later admitted to hospital with type II diabetes.
In the US, pro-lifers stopped bombing abortion clinics and united with survivalists to hunt down experimenters. In a tragic accident in Las Vegas at a soda marketing covention in a "Can you taste the difference" booth, two women seen taking Advil were lynched under a misapprehension. The names of all known experimenters were subsequently added to the "No fly" list and the TSA included Mentos and Diet Coke on their list of forbidden substances. Four gentlemen of a middle eastern complexion were later booked into the Gunatanamo "Hilton" after attempting to buy Diet Coke in a New York deli.
