You really can make a plastic bottle collapse without touching it! The air does the job for you. You cannot feel air, but it presses against every surface. This is called “air pressure.”
To do this experiment you will need the following items:
1.A bag of ice
2.A funnel
3.A cup for hot and cold water
4.A plastic soft drink bottle
5.A bowl
1st Step: Stand the bottle upright in the bowl and fill it about half full with hot water. Leave the lid off for a short amount of time.
2nd Step: Screw the top on the bottle and lay the bottle down inside of the bowl.
3rd Step: Pour ice and cold water over the bottle.
4th Step: Stand the bottle up and watch it collapse!
5th Step: As the warm air inside the bottle cools, it exerts less pressure. The pressure of the air outside is stronger and crushes the bottle.
Scientific Explaination
We can reduce air pressure in a container by taking out some of the air. One way to do this is by cooling the air inside to reduce the air pressure. So, when we put the closed pop bottle in the pan and covered it with the very cold ice water, the liquid cools the bottle and the air inside. This will cause the bottle to crush. Therefore, by cooling the air inside the bottle we reduced the air pressure inside the bottle. Since the air outside the bottle was at a higher pressure than the air inside, it pushed in on the walls of the bottle until it crushed them.
Great! You have got an excellent experimenter to present it.
ReplyDeleteGreat experiment, Angela and Erin.
ReplyDelete