Natural Disasters Rube Goldberg: To Drop Mentos in Diet Coke

Title:
Natural Disasters Rube Goldberg: To Drop Mentos in Diet Coke

Description:
Steps in Rube Goldberg (Including Energies and Machines) 1. Golf ball rolls down tube and hits over the cup of water. (Gravitational Potential Energy and Kinetic Energy from the golf ball and cup) 2. Water goes down a funnel and turns a water wheel which is part of a pulley system and pulls up a piece of cardboard releasing marbles. (Gravitational Energy pulls the water down the funnel, Hydro Energy in the water turning the wheel, Wheel and Axel as a Machine, and Pulley as Machine connected with wheel and cardboard) 3. Marbles roll down maze and drop into the basket, which is part of another pulley system, which lifts up another cardboard releasing a train. (Gravitational Potential Energy in the balls as they go down maze, Pulley as Machine connected with basket and cardboard) 4. The train rolls down a hill and hits a poll with a lever on top causing the firehouse to fall down. (Gravitation Potential Energy as the train rolls down the hill, Kinetic Energy in the train as it hits over the poll, Lever as a Machine and when the train hits it tips over and causes the firehouse to fall off, Gravitational Potential Energy in the firehouse) 5. The firehouse is connected with another pulley system and causes a basket string to turn on a hairdryer. (Electrical Energy because of the hairdryer being turned on) 6. The hairdryer blows a marble on an incline plane into a chute, which presses the reset button on the extension cord. (Wind Energy because the hairdryer blows the ball up the incline plane and makes it fall into the chute, Incline Plane as a Machine because the ball is rolling up the ramp, Gravitational Potential Energy as the ball falls down the chute, Kinetic Energy as the ball hits the reset button on the extension cord) 7. The extension cord turning on makes the Jacobs ladder turn on, and cut a string. (When the Jacob's ladder is turned on, a step up transformer is turned on, causing 13,500 volts to travel up of each of two wires. Because so much voltage is so close to each other, the air at the bottom (where the wires are closest) ionizes. Ionization Energy, basically an electron is removed from the neutral atom and is able to conduct electricity-Electric Energy because Electricity is the flow of Electrons, so the air becomes a conductor-a spark is formed between the wires, as to cause a circuit. This phenomena is basically what happens with lightning where the air is also ionized so a current, namely a spark, can travel through it. The circuit in that case is completed when it hits the ground. Heat Energy, the spark releases heat, and as the bolt between the two wires gets really hot, it travels upwards. The bolt then goes back to the bottom to start again because the wires dont have enough energy to ionize the air in a larger gap, so the current then starts at the very bottom where the wires are closest and it takes the least amount of energy to ionize the air.) 8. The string was connected to a rocket and a box of Mentos creating a pulley system. (Pulley as a Machine in that as the string was connected to a pulley system, in that when the rocket was dropped the box of Mentos opened) 9. As the string gets cut the rocket falls and causes the box of Mentos to open and drop Mentos into a funnel into a liter of Diet Coke. (Gravitational Potential Energy is the Mentos as the Mentos are ready to fall when the box is opened) 10. As the Mentos fall into the Diet Coke and reach the bottom of the bottle a reaction occurs and causes the Diet Coke to fizz and explode. (The reaction of Mentos with Diet Coke is not, as some have surmised, a chemical reaction, and no products other than flat Diet Coke, soggy Mentos and carbon dioxide are produced. The reason that the soda erupts so violently from the bottle is actually twofold: a decrease of the surface tension of the soda (due to dissolving Mentos), and an increase in nucleation sites (sites where bubbles of CO2 can form) within the bottle (due to the rough Mentos surface). Both of these factors make the carbon dioxide in the soda less likely to stay dissolved and more likely to become gaseous. The fountain effect is from all of the CO2 going from dissolved to gaseous at once, and at a great rate.) THE END !!!!!WE LOVE PHYSICS!!!!!

Author:
lrsphysics

Tags:
Rube Goldberg, SHP, We LOVE Physics,