Footage of a quick and easy trick you can use to empty a water bottle has people arguing in the comments section about the wonders of science.
You learn something new every day on social media. Is the information you learn always valuable? Not really. But sometimes you learn about how to empty a water bottle really quickly and what this teaches us about liquids in general, and that’s quite cool.
Physics account shows cool water bottle emptying trick
Gnoledgeofficial, a viral page dedicated to science and general knowledge, has prompted a healthy debate by showing three methods of emptying a water bottle, including the supposed “fastest way” to do so.
In the first instance, we see a water bottle simply being tipped upside down, which takes over 15 seconds to empty. The person behind the camera then proceeds to swirl the bottle creating a vortex-like effect, emptying the bottle in just over eight seconds.
The fastest method is the third and final one, however, in which a bent straw is placed inside the lid of the bottle with a cover on the top of the straw that is quickly removed before the emptying process – this creates a passage of air inside the water container. This process takes just four and a half seconds to complete.
Debate in the comments about physics vs engineering
Though intended to just be a cool post about a fun party trick, like most science content, the viral clip prompted a debate in the comments section below.
One Instagram commenter went to the effort of explaining why the water fell the way it did in each clip, writing: “In the first method, the air inside the bottle was increasing it’s pressure slowly waiting for the water at the bottom to flow out chunk by chunk.
“But in the second method, the vortex creates a water-dragging hole in the centre thereby dragging the atmospheric air much faster and the water flowed much faster.
“Similarly in the third method there is a clear opening to the top of (the) bottle connected to the atmosphere via a straw so the air from outside rushes inward and creates an additional downward force on the water thereby draining it much quicker than the first two ways. Using a similar logic you can say if you increased the diameter of straw the water would flow more quickly as more air can rush in now.”
One commenter was not impressed by the introduction of the straw, however. “Adding a tool is cheating”, they claimed.
“It’s no longer a fair fight of physics, and becomes a matter of engineering. And, an engineer would tell you, since the environment is no longer a factor, cut open the side of the bottle and see how long it takes to just dump the water.”
This bold claim was met with a rather mixed response though, with another science enthusiast snapping back with: “Engineering is a product of physics, so it is still physics, the laws of physics was displayed here bro”.
Another commenter went on to add: “The constraint here is fastest method without altering the environment (aka damaging the bottle itself). Adding a tool (the straw) isn’t altering the environment.”
To which the original commenter replied: “Environment might have been the wrong word; the point is that the variables are not the same in each test when you’re adding a tool to assist in the extraction”.
And who says science is boring?
