Craft Activity: Bottle Flipping Experiment
Craft Activity: Bottle Flipping Experiment
Have you ever done the Bottle Flipping Challenge? It became a brief trend in 2016 after a video of a high school student attempting it went viral. Try our take on it, and go a bit deeper into the science of how and why it’s so difficult to land a flipped water bottle upright. Make it a fun challenge by seeing which family members or friends will be the first to do it!
Happy & Healthy Cooking,
Fun-Da-Mentals Kitchen Skills
- craft :
to plan and create objects from found or available items or ready-made patterns for purposes that are decorative, functional, or both.
- experiment :
to try out new ideas, recipes, ingredients, or combinations of ingredients when cooking; to perform scientific tests in a laboratory or in the field to discover or verify something.
- hypothesize :
to predict a possible outcome or result when performing a test or experiment.
Equipment Checklist
- Plastic flat-bottomed water bottles (3)
- Funnel
Ingredients
Craft Activity: Bottle Flipping Experiment
- water
- food coloring, optional
- oil (vegetable, canola, olive, etc.)
- syrup (corn syrup, maple syrup, etc.)
Instructions
Craft Activity: Bottle Flipping Experiment
hypothesize
We are performing a science experiment with this craft activity. You will see these science words: hypothesis, experiment, test, and result. A hypothesis is an educated guess or prediction as to what might happen when an experiment is done. Before completing the experiment, hypothesize or predict which bottle and its liquid you think will flip the easiest or the best, and why.
fill + water
Using the funnel, fill one of the water bottles with water, about 1/4 full. (Optionally, add food coloring to the water for a fun twist and to see how the water moves when flipping.) Close the cap tightly.
fill + oil
Repeat Step 2, filling a bottle about 1/4 full with oil.
fill + syrup
Repeat Step 2, filling a bottle about 1/4 full with syrup.
experiment
Holding the water-filled bottle at its neck, lightly flick your wrist upwards as you let the bottle go. Can you get it to land on its bottom? Then, run the test again using the maple syrup and oil-filled bottles.
results
What were the results of your experiment? Did one bottle flip more easily or better than another? Was your hypothesis correct?
test again
Try filling the bottles with more liquid or less liquid, or try both! Did anything change? Did different amounts of liquid make a difference?
science time
After your bottle flipping experiment, check out The Science of Bottle Flipping below to explain the science behind your results.
Hi! I'm Water!
"I don't like to brag, but I'm pretty spectacular. In fact, you couldn't live without me! Just take two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, or H2O, and voila! You've got a clear, odorless, tasteless liquid vital to all living things! I can be quite bubbly or very still. I fill drinking glasses, clouds, bathtubs, pools, lakes, rivers, and oceans, and I'm lots of fun if you have a boat (toy or real-life size), pool floats, water skis, or scuba gear!"
- Around 60 percent of the human body is water. It comprises about 71 percent of the Earth's surface, and oceans contain about 96.5 percent of its water.
- Clouds are masses of condensed water vapor floating in the sky. They are made up of tiny water droplets or frozen crystals. When they combine and become too large and heavy to remain suspended, they fall to the ground as rain or snow.
- Water can exist as a gas (water vapor), liquid, or solid. Water vapor or "steam" happens through evaporation when water molecules are warmed by a heat source like a stove or the sun, move rapidly apart, and escape into the air. You can see steam rise from a pot of boiling water on the stove or from a swimming pool when cold water is heated by the sun.
- When water freezes, it becomes a solid we call "ice." Water molecules slow down and get closer, organizing themselves into a fixed position. Ice forms at temperatures at or below zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Liquid water is used in cooking to boil or poach foods like eggs, rice, vegetables, and meat. Steam can also cook some of these same foods and keep more of the nutrients in vegetables from being lost in the cooking water.
- Iced is used in cooking as an ice bath to freshen and crisp up raw vegetables and quickly stop the continued cooking of eggs or vegetables. Putting hard-boiled eggs in ice water may make them easier to peel. Ice cubes help remove fat from gravy and soup and keep cold food fresher for a longer time. Adding an ice cube or two to the top of cooked rice before reheating it in the microwave will add moisture and make it come out softer and fluffier. Last but not least, ice is essential in creating ice cream!
The Science of Bottle Flipping!
- Bottle flipping became popular in 2016 with a viral internet video of a teenager attempting it at a high school talent show. Experimenting with bottle flipping is fun, and the science behind it is quite interesting.
- When a water bottle is flipped, it gains some angular momentum, which means the bottle has some rotational energy. Any object that has angular momentum will keep rotating unless something slows it down, like the friction of a hand on a flying plastic disc. Even if your flipped bottle lands straight on the table, angular momentum dictates that the bottle should keep trying to spin, then fall over. How does the bottle stay upright after it has been flipped, then?
- Water is free to flow inside the bottle, and as the bottle rotates, some of this water slides around and hits the inside of the bottle, absorbing much of the bottle's angular momentum. At this point, the bottle is flipping very slowly, and it falls straight down due to gravity. If you've timed everything right, the bottle will land straight on the table, and without any angular momentum to knock it over, it will stay upright.
- Why does an oil-filled bottle flip and land easily, but not a syrup-filled bottle? The key here is the viscosity of the liquid, or how easily the liquid flows. In fact, the trick will only work if it contains a liquid that can quickly flow around (which means a liquid with low viscosity). A flipped bottle full of oil will slow its own rotation as the slippery oil slides around inside, but a flipped bottle full of syrup will keep spinning and knock itself over when it lands, because syrup does not flow easily.
- Lastly, you may have noticed that this trick does not work when the bottle has too much or too little water inside. This result is because the water needs to have enough mass to counter the angular momentum of the spinning bottle, without being so heavy that the bottle's center of gravity moves high up towards the bottle's cap. A high center of gravity will make the bottle more prone to tipping over, making a nearly full water bottle much harder to successfully flip than a bottle that is only one-third full.
The Yolk's On You
What did the bottled water tell the spy?
"The name's Bond, Hydrogen Bond."
The Yolk's On You
What is a scientist’s favorite flavor of gum?
Experi-mint!
Lettuce Joke Around
Drinking water is so popular, but I don’t really get the hype.
Maybe it’s just too mainstream!
