Crush the Bottle
What you need:
- A 2-liter plastic pop bottle with a cap
- 1/4 cup water
- Rubber stopper that fits in the top of the pop bottle (optional)
- Large bowl of icewater
- Oven mitts
What you do:
- Take a 2-liter bottle and pour 1/4 cup water in it.
- Have an adult put the bottle in a microwave oven with the top off. Let the adult microwave this for about 2 minutes or until the water is vigorously boiling.
- Quickly open the door and screw the cap back on. (If the cap does not fit well because the plastic has shrunk in the microwave, a rubber stopper may be used.) Careful! The bottle is very hot.
- Quickly remove the bottle from the microwave using the oven mitts and put it into the bowl of icewater. The bottle will be crushed almost completely flat.
What happened?
When the water heated up, it began to change into a gas called water vapor or steam. The steam needed to take up space, so it drove out all the other air that was in the bottle. The air in the bottle was at high pressure because it was so hot.
However, when we closed off the bottle and
put it into a bowl of icewater, the water vapor cooled down, so
it had lower pressure. The higher pressure air outside the bottle
wanted to move to where there was lower pressure inside the bottle,
so the air outside crushed the bottle.
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