Another Internet Hoax (or not)!

Yes, my friends, watch this video above and you will be amazed how a couple of ingredients will make a Mountain Dew glow! NOT SO! Try it and you will be saddly disappointed. You make get a pressure buildup in the bottle do to the reaction of the soda with the hydrogen peroxide.

Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, for the REST OF THE STORY! Instead of me explaining, let me post some blog comments that were supplied by About.com:Chemistry readers.

(1) Chris says:
The guys added the liquid from a glow stick and the unbroken glass chemical solution before the video was recorded. When he shook the bottle the glass tube broke and created a glow stick. The baking soda and peroxide are just there. They have no effect on anything. Actually, baking soda and peroxide react with each other and if there is enough of it it can create and explosion based on pressure.

(2) Timothy J. Paul says:
If you watch it closely, you can see that a break in continuity occurs after the person pours the Mountain Dew into the glass. During this break is when the contents of a glow stick were added to the Mountain Dew bottle. According to Wikipedia, hydrogen peroxide serves as an activating agent for the glow-stick dye. “It reacts with the ester to form an unstable CO2 dimer which excites the dye to an excited state; the dye emits a photon (light) when it spontaneously relaxes back to the ground state.” I don’t know what the purpose of the baking soda is… apparently just to help activate the hydrogen peroxide, which is why it says, “add a little…” Mountain Dew may have more sugar and caffeine than most sodas, but there’s clearly nothing much different about it otherwise. Just another internet scam.

(3) Sam in Virginia says:
I tried it last night with my six year old son watching intensely and sure enough it was a hoax. Damn, wish I would have done a little more research first. My son really likes glow in the dark stuff and I think I had his hopes up. Oh well, that will teach me!

(4) Cory says:
in the video when this happends when the camera zooms in on the baking soda and zooms back out you can see how the bottle has been rotated. the MTN> DEW logo no longer faces the camera insted its the back of the bottle. meaning the bottles were switched while zoomed in.

OK, now my scientific minds - here be a final post that was from early this year.

Tracy Connolly says:
My daughter chose this as her science fair project this year and it was successful. As a matter of fact, our whole family including the dog gathered in the bathroom to witness the results of the Glow in the Dark Mountain Dew. It did glow for about 20 mins after first completing the experiment. I believe the amount of each element was the difference. I notice that your project says to use one pinch of baking soda. Well my husband added an extra one. Retry the project and use different variables as you go to see if the outcome changes. It does work. Good Luck!

Now who do you believe?

Not Tracy!

Needless to say, this video is a smoothly editted hoax. These ingredients will not cause mountain dew to flouresce. The choice of mountain dew for this hoax is simply due to the similarity in the colors. In all likelihood, the hoaxster has used luminol or some similarly flourescing substance in place of the mountain dew, thanks to some decent editting. The addition of an oxidizer such as peroxide will cause luminol to flouresce. This is the same principle behind the glow sticks, two substances contained within separate enclosures, the inner being a glass vial. Once the vial is broken, and the liquids merge, the reaction causes the flourescing.Simple chemistry. Good editting. That's it.