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Sunday, November 4, 2012

Glowing Mountain Dew

           One day while I was on StumbleUpon I came across a site that showed the picture to the left. Pretty amazing right? The best part of this is that you only need Mountain Dew, Peroxide and Baking soda. All of which you can get from a local store for under $5. So the instructions on the site told to pour out about 3/4 of the Mountain Dew so 1/4 is left in the plastic bottle. Next add 3 cap fulls of the Peroxide to the Mountain Dew and mix around. Finally the website instructed to add baking soda, not a certain amount or anything just to add it. I preceded to add about a tablespoon and then to mix around and then two more. I shook it around and ran into my bathroom and shut the door; that was the darkest place I could find.  Standing there shaking the bottle for about a minute I was still in complete darkness. Figuring it had something to do with the very vague step of the baking soda, I figured I could add more until the reaction took place and it would light up, I did so... and did so... and did so. A little bummed I preceded to head to the internet and look for what I did wrong. What I had done wrong was be a little to gullible.

           Previous to the experiment I had done no further research about it, if I had it would have shown that this is nothing more than a hoax. There is nothing that is chemically to different about Mountain Dew than any other soda and if it was to work with Mountain Dew it should work with all others, but it didn't, because there is no reason that peroxide and baking soda should make soda glow. I was tricked and it was disappointing because I wanted it to work so bad. Now I have all this extra peroxide and baking soda laying around and no cool glow stick MacGyver knowledge to help me out should I ever get stuck in a cave.

           So if you want to re-create the photo you need the same ingredients but as well now dish soap and... a glow-stick. Which kind of defeats the purpose, if I want something to glow and i have all of that why would I not just use the glow-stick? My feeling aside, to make it repeat the steps above and add a teaspoon of soap and then activate the glow-stick by snapping it and then cut it open and pour the glowing liquid into the Mountain Dew. The internet wins this time but I will find some experiment that WILL work and I will show how to do it on here. There won't be any foolery either just straight up science. 

1 comment:

  1. You know you can do this with your phone, just use the flashlight app and hold it onto the bottom of the bottle. The liquid acts as a reflecting surface and allows the light to be more like a lantern

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