How to make a glowing fountain at home

What happens when you put a Mento in tonic water

Did you know that even the most or­di­nary ton­ic wa­ter glows un­der UV light? In this ex­per­i­ment, we’ll show you how to make a glow­ing foun­tain us­ing ton­ic wa­ter!

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

None.

Reagents and equip­ment

  • UV light;
  • stan­dard ton­ic wa­ter (con­tain­ing qui­nine);
  • Men­tos.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Per­form this ex­per­i­ment in a dark­ened room. Turn on your UV light and toss 2 Men­tos into a bot­tle of ton­ic wa­ter. En­joy the glow­ing foun­tain!

Process de­scrip­tion

Ton­ic wa­ter con­tains a sub­stance known as qui­nine. Qui­nine’s mol­e­cules ab­sorb UV light and re­lease the en­er­gy as blue light. This phe­nom­e­non is known as flu­o­res­cence.

Fizzy drinks con­tain a large quan­ti­ty of dis­solved car­bon diox­ide gas, which grad­u­al­ly es­capes af­ter the bot­tle is opened. This process can be has­tened by adding a Men­to or two. The rough sur­face of the can­dy aids the re­lease of a large quan­ti­ty of car­bon diox­ide gas, which jets out of the bot­tle­neck like a foun­tain. Mean­while, the ad­di­tives in the ton­ic wa­ter and Men­tos also con­trib­ute to the for­ma­tion of the foam.

Try it