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A Crushing Experience

You Will Need:

rubber kitchen gloves
1 empty 2-L pop bottle, with cap
hot and cold water taps
a sink

What to Do

1. Put on a pair of rubber kitchen gloves. (Tap water can be very hot!)
2. Fill a plastic pop bottle with hot water from the tap. (Figure 1)
3. Let the hot water sit in the bottle for a minute, and then pour it out into a sink. (Figure 2)
4. Immediately cap the empty bottle. Make sure the cap is on tight.
5. Run cold water from a tap over the capped pop bottle. (Figure 3) What happens?
6. What happens to the pop bottle after it warms up? (This may take some time.)

When you pour out the hot water, the 'empty' bottle still contains water vapour. Cooling the sealed bottle by running cold water over it causes the water vapour to condense to liquid water, which occupies far less volume. This creates a partial vacuum inside the bottle. Air pressure outside the bottle crushes the bottle.

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