What Happens When You Mix Coke And Salt?
Learning the reasons behind a reaction, a behavior or a mechanism is pretty fascinating -- that's why a self described "Crazy Russian" has 6.2 million subscribers looking at his video experiments.
Taras Kul, better known as YouTuber Crazy Russian Hacker, decided to teach his fans about a little process that happens when you mix salt and a carbonated beverage.
The reaction, called nucleation, is due to the rough surface of a grain of salt (fun fact: all Salt grains have pits and look like ancient ruins) providing a site for the carbon dioxide in the soda to form into bubbles.
It's the same physical change that happens when you throw a rough-surfaced Mentos candy into a bottle of Diet Coke. Since there's a little over 300,000 grains of salt in a tablespoon, when you toss that into a bottle of Coke, that equals a big reaction.
Watch the full experiment below.
For more about the science behind nucleation and why it happens, watch this little clip from MythBusters.