YouTubers Mixed Baking Soda With 10,000 Liters Of Coca-Cola – And The Results Were Absolutely Insane

After years of preparation, Maxim Monakhov’s now on the verge of finally seeing his insane experiment unfold. He’s spent thousands of dollars on obtaining all the right materials, but now comes the tricky part. He’s going to add baking soda to 10,000 liters of Coca-Cola, all in the hope of witnessing something spectacular. The question is: will all his hard work pay off? And, perhaps more importantly, is it going to be safe?

We’ve all seen what happens when you add Mentos or baking soda to a big bottle of Coke. There are, after all, plenty of videos of people doing it online. And chances are pretty high that you’ve even given it a go yourself. But now Monakhov wants to take things to the extreme.

Rumor has it that Russian Monakhov – who’s more widely known by his YouTube name Mamix – has invested something close to 700,000 rubles into his experiment. That works out at roughly $9,500, which is a huge amount of cash for a venture like this. If nothing else, it shows just how committed the popular YouTuber is to entertaining his audience.

Along with his companions, Monakhov figured that it’s probably best to pull this stunt off outside of any urban areas. That’s probably wise, given the uncertainties surrounding crazy experiments like this. Who knows how big the chemical reaction caused by the combination of all this Coke and baking soda will be?

So, here they are now, in a big field with nobody else around to get hurt. It’s time to get going. Into a giant container, Monakhov and his crew pour thousands upon thousands of liters of Coke. And now comes the moment of truth: they’re ready to add the baking soda.

Given what we already know about adding Mentos to two-liter bottles of Coke, we can be pretty sure that this experiment’s going to be memorable. After all, the Mentos trick has been famous for years. You could say that it really took off in 2005, which was the same year that YouTube was founded. That’s no coincidence, as this new platform helped the Mentos trick to be widely viewed.

The Coke and Mentos reaction’s an amazing thing to see, but how exactly does it work? Well, the truth is that there’s quite a lot going on. Firstly, while there are all sorts of ingredients inside Coke, it’s plain old carbon dioxide that provides the fizz.

Were you to give a bottle of Coke a little shake, you’d see a load of bubbles appearing at the edges of the plastic. This is the result of carbon dioxide separating from the rest of the drink. Then, if you were to turn the bottle cap, those bubbles would shoot up to try to escape. In doing so, they’d cause the Coke to spurt out of the bottle.

You can also disturb the carbon dioxide in soda by drop something into it. If you did that, you’d then see bubbles appearing around whatever object you put in the drink. The way in which these bubbles form’s called nucleation.

A Mento’s really effective at kick-starting the nucleation process because of its unique shape. Basically, the surface of the sweet’s covered in a huge number of little dents, which are really good for allowing carbon dioxide bubbles to develop. In other words, these cavities are ideal nucleation sites.

So, when a Mento’s dropped into some Coke, those bubbles instantly begin to develop in the mint’s cavities. The bubbles then swiftly shoot up to the top, pushing all the Coke out of its path. With nowhere else to go, the liquid will surge up in the most dramatic fashion.

The incredible fountain of Coke that shoots into the sky is quite the sight to behold. It’s so much bigger than you’d expect, given that all you’ve used is a bottle of soda and some mint candies. You might wonder, then, how big could the explosion be if you used a larger amount of the ingredients?

This seems to have been the precise thinking of the popular YouTuber Monakhov. As we’ve all seen from countless videos, the reaction of Mentos inside a two-liter bottle of Coke can be immense. But if you were to use, say, 10,000 liters of the soda, just how powerful could the result be?

To most of us, such an idea would just be too crazy to actually try out. But Monakhov has developed something of a reputation over the years for undertaking in similarly insane schemes. He posts all sorts of unusual “experiments” on YouTube, where he’s managed to assemble millions of followers.

But it’s all well and good to say you’ll create a huge chemical reaction using 10,000 liters of Coke, yet how exactly do you go about achieving it? Well, one of the first things you’d need to figure out is where to stage the stunt. After all, it’s likely to cause quite a mess.

Bearing that in mind, Monakhov decided to set the stunt in the middle of a big field, so no bystanders were likely to get hurt. But there was still the matter of sourcing all that Coke, which wouldn’t come cheap. In fact, it’s believed that the YouTuber invested the equivalent of roughly $9,500 for 10,000 liters of the soda!

That’s a huge amount of money for the sake of a YouTube video, but Monakhov did find ways to cut back a little. Instead of shelling out loads more cash for Mentos, he opted for baking soda to cause the reaction in the Coke. This would be way less expensive than the mints.

The result would apparently be the same when using baking soda instead of Mentos, though. Once the baking soda was added to the liquid, a tremendous volume of carbon dioxide would form and the liquid would consequently burst towards the sky. At least, that’s what Monakhov was hoping would happen.

Monakhov and his team also had to specially construct a container that could hold this immense quantity of Coke. It had to be able to survive the intense pressure caused by an explosion. They then finished it off with a Coca-Cola label. And with that all done, the group was ready to get going.

And so, with the day of the experiment finally upon them, Monakhov and his pals kicked things off. With the help of buckets and a crane, they managed to transfer the absurd amount of Coke into their specially designed vat. Things, so far, were all going to the group’s plan.

In the YouTube video documenting all this, Monakhov speaks to camera in his native tongue. He tells his viewers about the crazy amount of money he’s invested into the experiment, before revealing just how long he’d been plotting the scheme. Crazy as it sounds, he claims that the project had been planned over almost half a decade.

That’s a long, long time to be thinking about such a ludicrous experiment, but it seems Monakhov took it very seriously. As the video’s description explains when translated to English, “We launched 10,000 liters of cola mixed with [baking] soda. Yes, it would seem such an absurd and useless thing – but for me it means a lot.”

So, with all the Coke sitting inside their massive container, the moment of truth awaited. They’d now have to add the baking soda to the liquid. But what was going to happen? Would the reaction be as intense as they expected, or maybe even more so? Or would nothing happen at all?

Well, there was only one way to find out. With the help of a sort of pulley system, the team managed to get the baking soda up to the vat. Then, it was just a matter of adding the powder. They dumped the soda into the liquid and scampered away as quickly as they possibly could.

You can probably confidently guess what happened next. As soon as the baking soda combined with the vast pool of soda, an incredibly powerful reaction took place. And just like when a tiny Mento’s added to a two-liter bottle of Coke, the liquid immediately shot high into the sky.

The difference on this occasion, though, was all to do with the sheer scope of the reaction. With all that Coke and baking soda, the jet shooting up towards space was bound to be immense. But even though it may have been predictable, it was still a wildly impressive sight to behold.

It should go without saying, but the video documenting this wild experiment has captured a huge number of people’s attention. Since it was uploaded to YouTube back in August 2020, in fact, the clip has amassed millions of views. So far, the number sits at more than 21 million and counting.

Naturally, many of the video’s viewers have been quick to let their thoughts be known in the comments section. It seems that one was blown away by the amount of work that must have gone into pulling the scheme off. They wrote, “This video remains the most labor-intensive and cool that I have ever seen.”

Another commenter praised Monakhov personally, going on to express their hope that the YouTuber’s officially recognized for his efforts. Translated into English, this viewer wrote, “Huge respect for Mamix! He does incredible things... Hopefully it will be included in the Guinness Book of Records. And Mamix himself will get there!”

Another comment focused on the sheer power of the reaction that Monakhov had caused. This viewer quipped that in the next decade, the YouTuber would be able to travel to Mars aboard a rocket powered by soda. And who knows? Maybe that’s exactly what the internet celebrity has planned next.

Not every viewer was quite so impressed with Monakhov, though. As one irate comment posted in English read, “What a waste of time, money and resources.” And to this person’s credit, that’s a hard point to argue with. The explosion of Coke was pretty amazing to see, but it certainly was wasteful.

But despite this viewer’s reservations, Monakhov’s clip can be broadly considered a success based on all the views, likes and comments it’s received so far. On top of that, many of the Russian’s other videos are going down really well, too. The young man’s become quite famous online for all his crazy experiments.

If you look online for Monakhov’s YouTube channels, you’ll notice that there seem to be two separate ones. Well, there’s an explanation for that. Basically, he sold one of them to a pal for a reported sum of around $270. They then took control of a channel that had acquired a subscriber list of almost 600,000 people.

When he started out, Monakhov’s online following was understandably pretty meager. But all things considered, it didn’t take long before he started to attract large numbers of followers. Once people saw the incredible lengths he was willing to go to for the sake of entertainment, his views shot up.

In less than a year, Monakhov’s new YouTube channel grew to become one of the most popular in all of Russia. But it would be a little while longer before he really found his groove. When he started conducting his extravagant “experiments” in the summer of 2017, though, he soon became a sensation.

There are plenty of wild videos spread across Monakhov’s various channels. But among the craziest has to be one in which he and an accomplice stack three trampolines on top of one another to see what’ll happen if a person jumps on them. Predictably, it wasn’t the most stable of structures.

One of Monakhov’s more disturbing videos sees him place a burger inside a tank of creepy-crawly maggots. He wants to see how quickly they eat the thing, but he ends up discovering something more interesting. He finds that the horrible creatures actually avoid the cooked patty, instead preferring the uncooked components of the burger.

In another, less horrifying clip, Monakhov tries to see what happens when you treat metal with liquid nitrogen. Will it smash if you were to hit it hard with something? As you might imagine, he’s not one to merely speculate about the outcome. So, he gives it a try.

There’s another video Monakhov posted that basically acts as a forerunner to the immense Coke and baking soda experiment. This clip was uploaded only a couple of months before the other one, but it used significantly fewer ingredients. He still used 1,000 liters of Coke, so it was certainly impressive.

Clearly, though, the massive reaction caused on that occasion merely whetted Monakhov’s appetite. He wanted to create a spurt of Coke that was ten times bigger, so that’s exactly what he set out to achieve. The lengths that some people are willing to go to for the sake of science... And it’s not just Monakhov, either! No, there are endless amounts of people looking to cash in on the making-massive-things-explode game.

Just take a look at the experimenters at the YouTube channel Vat19. They clearly figured that there’s nothing better than plopping a bath bomb into the tub and savoring its soothing fragrance after a hard day. But if a regular-sized version has the power to totally transform your soak, just imagine what one weighing 2,000 pounds would do when pushed into a swimming pool... Needless to say, it wouldn’t be very relaxing – but it would make for a good YouTube video!

The task at hand obviously required a lot of planning. You’re unlikely to find a bath bomb of this magnitude in the cosmetic aisle at Target, after all. And, yes, that meant the Vat19 crew had to build the giant fizzy ball themselves. So, where did they start?

Well, the team couldn’t just take a recipe off the internet. Sure, it’s easy to find bath bomb recipes online, but there’s no guidebook for building a 2,000-pound one! Even so, the Vat19 folks managed to pull the thing off, landing themselves in the Guinness World Records book at the same time. Yep, what they went on to create wasn’t just any bath bomb, it was the biggest the world has ever seen. Pretty impressive, right?

And after experimenting with regular-sized bath bombs, the team realized exactly what color they wanted to turn their swimming pool. This didn’t mean simply filling their 2,000-pound sphere with a ton of dye, mind you. If the intrepid bomb-builders wanted the signature fizzing sound, they’d have to use traditional ingredients as well.

But even with those ingredients, no one could predict what would happen when the gigantic bath bomb hit the water. Would it even work? What if it just sank to the bottom? Could it even explode? There was only one way to find out, and the experimental bunch were, of course, prepared to see it through.

The events that unfold in Vat19’s YouTube video are enough to make everyone poolside start screaming and shouting. You see, when the bubbling bomb finally smashes into the water, it makes for a truly epic backyard display. And so we don’t miss what’s going on beneath the surface, one guy even jumps into the pool to get a closer look at how the effervescent ball starts to react.

Of course, most bath bombs are not this extreme, as Mo Constantine can tell you. She’s a co-founder of cosmetics firm Lush – the “number one purveyor of bath bombs,” according to a 2018 piece by Fast Company. And, in fact, it was Constantine herself who came up with the bath bomb idea three decades ago. She’d wanted to create a product that would make water feel more luxurious without damaging the most sensitive skin. We bet, though, that she never anticipated the YouTubers’ crazy behavior years down the line!

According to Lush’s website, Constantine has said of her original concept, “I wanted to be able to introduce things to the bath [that] you wouldn’t normally be able to, such as peels, petals, butters and essential oils – lovely ingredients [that] would be beneficial to the skin.” And that initial vision was simple – much less showy than the colorful, fizzing bath bombs of today.

Now, Lush’s bath bombs have become so intricate that staffers actually make them one by one, according to Reader’s Digest. First, they blend sodium bicarbonate with that particular recipe’s fragrance and colors. Then the makers add citric acid into the mix. And after that, all the ingredients are poured into sphere-shaped molds and packed tightly by hand.

Interestingly, the basis of every Lush bath bomb has been mostly the same since Constantine first came up with the idea. She found that combining sodium bicarbonate – also known as baking soda – with citric acid created the perfect, soothingly fizzy reaction. The various extra ingredients are then added to that simple concoction. There are essential oils, for example, or coloring and all-natural glitter. Whatever takes your fancy, really!

Other brands use different ingredients, though. Pearl Bath Bombs incorporate Epsom salts, which can relieve tension and tightness in the muscles. There’s also almond oil – an addition that quenches and smooths the skin. As for fragrance, the company only drops in essential oils such as lavender and lemongrass. These scents, the makers say, give an all-natural, spa-like quality to the bombs of their brand.

But how exactly has this popular bath product evolved from when it was first invented? They don’t appear to have gotten any bigger, for one – well, certainly not as big as Vat19’s anyway! To explain more, Lush’s brand and product trainer, Meghan Campbell, spoke to Reader’s Digest about the store’s signature product. Today, you see, the bath bombs that are sold are apparently much brighter than the ones that first came onto the market.

In 2017 Campbell explained to the magazine, “The reason that we use color at all is to add to the effervescent, multi-sensory experience a bath bomb is intended to provide. Colors are capable of impacting our dispositions in much the same way essential oils have been shown to have an effect on our moods. And, for us, the color and the spectacle is half the fun!”

For others, though, the best part of a bath bomb is the fizzing sensation and wonderful smell. People will naturally have different preferences when it comes to finding the perfect bomb, and that’s why experimenting at home can be a great try-before-you-buy solution. Don’t fret: they’re actually relatively simple to make! The key – and arguably most obscure – ingredient is citric acid, although it’s still pretty straightforward to order online.

The rest of the components of bath bombs are a piece of cake to find – so easy, in fact, that you might even have them in your pantry already. Yes, according to Byrdie.com, all you’ll need is baking soda, Epsom salt, cornstarch and water. For the scent, color and feeling of luxury, simply add a few drops of essential oil, food coloring and skin-softening body oil, respectively.

And if you really want to, you could scale up the production of your homemade bath bomb to make one large enough for a swimming pool. That’s what the folks behind the YouTube channel Vat19 decided to do, anyway. Getting this creative and experimental wasn’t a new venture for the online entrepreneurs, either.

Most of Vat19’s YouTube channel serves its online store, which sells interesting products, toys, gadgets and more. And the team don’t just curate their stock with care, they also post videos of how each item works. Like we said, though, they also partner this content with videos that document their outlandish experiments.

The Vat19 gang explain on their channel’s “About” page, “We produce amazing challenge videos [and] document our outrageous contraptions. And [we] invite you to a front-row seat for our silly stunts. Sometimes we blow things up, fill up a bathtub or pool with crazy stuff, dare each other to eat super-spicy foods and answer ‘burning questions’ from our viewers.”

The Vat19 team have no problem playing with scale, either. In one experiment shared in March 2018, they decide to prep a bowl of cereal comprised of just marshmallows. It doesn’t sound like an earth-shattering project until, of course, you realize how much cereal they had – and the size of the bowl they needed.

The YouTubers apparently purchased 720 pounds of Just Cereal Marshmallows, and that sheer volume meant they had to engineer their own bowl to hold the whole lot! In Vat19’s video, the team cover a mold with epoxy and fiberglass – the same material used to make boats – so that the receptacle is sturdy enough to hold all of the breakfast and the milk. And, of course, there’s also a spoon: a six-foot-long utensil they commissioned because no other ladle would do.

Then, just over a year later, the Vat19 crew decided to add to their collection of homemade giant treats. This time, though, they hoped to fill a gap in the dessert market by preparing the largest-ever Jell-O cup. Yep, the experimental bunch shelled out a whopping $1,000 for 500 pounds of cherry-flavored gelatin.

But it turned out that getting 500 pounds of gelatin to set was much more difficult than the team first imagined. Who would have thought? The vat even grew a layer of mold on top! No matter. The YouTubers simply scraped it off and completed their project. To top it all off, one of the guys then jumped into the massive cup filled with 40-degree Jell-O. Even that may not have been their craziest experiment to date, though.

Clearly, creating oversized items is one of the Vat19 team’s specialties. But neither the jello nor the cereal is seen as their most impressive feat – according to the Guinness World Records list, at least. There, you’ll find the YouTubers have an entry for the largest ever bath bomb.

The idea for the ridiculously huge bath bomb came from, well, a regular-sized bath bomb. It’s one they sell on their site, and it has the power to turn clear water black without staining the tub. This led the Vat19 team to wonder, as they explain in their June 2018 YouTube video, “How big would the bomb need to be to black out an entire swimming pool?”

For those of you who are curious, the Vat19 video walks viewers through the bath bomb’s incredible and complex construction. To start, the team must make a mold for their giant fizzy ball, and they rely on a method they’ve tried and tested before. Remember how they used fiberglass to construct the massive cereal bowl? Well, they do the same to create both halves of the spherical mold needed for this project.

Then, with a sturdy mold completed, the Vat19 team shift their focus to the bomb itself. And, funnily enough, they rely on the same ingredients that you would find in the small spheres designed for the tub. For this mammoth version, however, they need much more than just a few spoonfuls of citric acid, baking soda and food coloring.

In total, the Vat19 folks purchased 31 different 50-pound bags of materials – or so they’ve claimed. But the recipe that they use to combine all those supplies together is relatively simple. In the video, the group explain that they mixed one part each of cornstarch and citric acid to two parts baking soda. Then, to that powdery blend, they add enough dye to turn the bomb black.

As you can see from the clip, pressing all of that into a spherical mold is, understandably, a process. First, the powder mix goes into the bottom half of the fiberglass outline. Then the Vat19 crew add some dye to darken the whole thing up. After that, the team pat the mixture down, flattening and packing it tightly into place. No one wants a crumbly bath bomb, do they?

Now, in order to completely fill the bottom portion of their bath bomb mold, the gang have to repeat that same process seven to eight times. They then wheel the half-sphere out into the sunlight because, as one person explains in the YouTube video, they need to “dry this sucker out.” And once it’s firmed up, the experimenters put the second half of their sphere mold on top and continue to build up the bomb.

In the clip, a few cheers can be heard after that step of the process is complete – but the Vat19ers know they still have a few hoops to jump through. For one, they need to figure out how on earth they’ll get their giant bath bomb out of its mold. The idea behind letting it harden for a day is that it doesn’t fall apart. Even so, the round, heavy object will presumably be tough to control and maneuver at any consistency.

From the events that unfold in the video, it’s clear that the crew must have a good amount of faith in their creation – so much, in fact, that they decide to unshell their bath bomb right next to the pool. That way, after the fiberglass casing and its supports are removed, the experimenters can simply tip the container and plop the sphere right into the water. Then they’ll finally get to see if the experiment actually worked.

Luckily, the supports and shell come off with ease, and the Vat19ers pull away the casing to reveal a perfectly spherical, tightly pressed bath bomb in the middle. And the sheer size of the powdery ball shocks even the crew who made it. One of them exclaims, “That’s one big bath bomb, y’all.”

With the massive bath bomb unsheathed, there is only one thing left to do: push it into the pool and see what happens. We already know what transpires when a regular-sized bomb hits bathwater. But how will a ton of the stuff react when it falls into H2O?

With only one push, the bath bomb starts to roll toward the water, falling in with a huge splash. Initially, it sinks to the bottom, but it rises back up to the surface as it starts to fizz. This move elicits screams from the Vat19 team, and that includes the sole swimmer who entered the pool alongside the 2,000-pound creation.

In the clip, it quickly becomes clear that the massive bath bomb won’t do any harm, though. Instead, it gently bubbles as it changes the color of the pool. The aquamarine-tinted waters start turning an opaque gray – and as the sphere fizzes, it spreads its dye to every corner.

There’s yet another bonus, too. Because the Vat19 bath bomb is so large, it doesn’t disappear with the same hastiness of a handheld version. So, those who’ve now also entered the pool can pick up chunks of the baking soda-based ball. In the YouTube video, they’re seen patting and smashing it onto their hands as the main chunk continues to fizz.

And, naturally, those who viewed Vat19’s clip had plenty to say about the impressive experiment. One commenter said that the record-breaking bomb was the perfect response to their mom telling them, “You can only use one bath bomb in the tub.” Another joked that the pool’s filter was probably saying, “Here we go again.”

But the video also left a few folks wondering how the Vat19 crew would ever “get the pool back to normal.” And although the bath bomb builders didn’t address this topic in their YouTube clip, another fan theorized that it would need emptying and refilling to get rid of any powdery remnants.

One commenter even suggested that they’d preferred the look of the pool pre-bomb explosion. They wrote, “Can we all just get a moment to appreciate the fact that the water looks so refreshing and clean before they put in the bath bomb?” That comment got 85 likes, so others clearly felt the same way, too!

Regardless of opinions like those, the Vat19 bath bomb experiment was a viral sensation. At time of writing, the clip has nearly 30 million views on YouTube – which, by anyone’s standards, is pretty good going. But what about the people who actually built the 2,000-pound bomb? Well, as you may expect, they’ve continued with their crazy experiments. Since then, for instance, the team have gone on to build the world’s largest stress ball and a 135-pound gummy burger, to name just two of their incredible creations.