Science experiments can be very important tools, used to determine how and why events and principles work.
But they also can be a lot of fun.
The Fort Morgan teens in the 2014 Fort Morgan Teen Summer Reading Program have experienced that fun, as well as quite a bit of scientific learning, for themselves this summer.
Most recently, the teens learned about chemical reactions.
And while that may sound boring, the experiment they did for this was far less than boring.
They took Mentos candies and Diet Coke and combined them Thursday morning in City Park.
Just like in the YouTube videos, they got a shooting geyser of Diet Coke flying out of the bottle.
But they also learned about the science behind that reaction and its resulting geyser.
The candy is covered with small pores on its surface, and those pores quickly react with the soda when they meet and it releases lots of carbon dioxide gas, CO2, from the soda as a foam that shoots out of the bottle as a result.
This reaction first was popularized by science educator Steve Spangler, who demonstrated it on TV in 2002.
It since has been featured in copious YouTube videos, as curious people tried it for themselves.
"MythBusters" also took on this reaction, studying it in multiple episodes of the TV series. The MythBusters found that the potassium benzoate, aspartame and CO2 gas in the diet soda when combined with the gelatin and gum arabic in the Mentos contributed to the rapid formation and expulsion of the foam, resulting in the shooting geyser.
The teens also tried a number of other science experiments that created "everyday chemical reactions" during the program, according to Fort Morgan Children's Librarian Katie Holmburg.
For example, they put baking soda and vinegar together inside balloons to watch them blow up, even explode, as the resulting reaction expanded the chemicals inside the balloons. This is the same combination often used to create the reaction for volcanoes as science projects.
Another reaction they created was what Holmburg called "two-ingredient play dough."
They put together one part hair conditioner with two parts corn starch, mixed them up, and then had a batch of dough they could shape and mold.
For those who want to try that reaction for themselves, Holmburg recommended using unscented conditioner.
She said using the scented kind led to a bit of an overwhelming smell in the play dough.