When scientist and toy e-retailer Steve Spangler does an experiment, things just might explode. Like the time he mixed mint candy and soda to create a “Mentos geyser,” posted a video of it on his weblog, and became a star of YouTube and a TV quiz show.
Spangler, a Denver-based science educator and entrepreneur, has had his online store, SteveSpanglerScience.com, since 2002, peddling science-related toys and equipment, and his blog since 2004. He also has a weekly segment on a local news show, demonstrating cool science stuff.
One fateful day in September 2005, he showed up at 9News with four two-liter bottles of soda and several boxes of Mentos to enact the now-famous “Mentos geyser” effect. His unwary co-anchor didn’t step back fast enough, and was drenched with Diet Pepsi and root beer. Spangler posted the comical video on his blog, SteveSpangler.com, it made its way to YouTube, and by the time News9’s lawyers stepped in to protest copyright infringement, hundreds of people had posted their own Mentos geysers, making the original all but superfluous. (YouTube now has more than 12,000 Mentos videos.)
The soda-and-mints experiment has been around for decades (though wintergreen Lifesavers were the original candy of choice), and Spangler himself had performed it numerous times with Mentos at science education conventions. But the magical combination of TV-blog-YouTube set off a viral phenomenon that has the Mentos folks laughing all the way to the bank—and to a licensing agreement with Spangler’s company to develop a line of co-branded toys that take advantage of the explosive relationship between chalky mints and carbon dioxide.
Spangler’s original blog post is still attracting comments more than a year later, and he was asked to write a question about the Mentos geyser for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (which the contestant answered correctly because, of course, he had done the experiment himself).
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