I loved this next experiment. I did something that every science nerd loves to do, make an implosion! When I woke up this morning I immediately encountered a problem. For this particular experiment, you need a hot plate. I thought we had one in our possession but apparently not. Even though we did not have the right tool, I was determined to do an experiment today. So I took an empty can and filled it with just enough water to cover the bottom of the can. I am supposed to put the can on a hot plate but since I did not have one, with my parents permission, put the can on a pan with a little water in it on the stove. With my dad’s supervision, I turned on the stove. What I was going to do is when I heard the water boiling inside the can I would wait one minute. Then I would take tongs, grab the can, and quickly flip the open end into cold water and that would result in an implosion. Hoping my substitution would work, I waited anxiously for the water to boil. As expected the water in the pan boiled easily.
After a while, the water inside the can did not boil. I decided that I would try it out anyway. I grabbed the kitchen tongs, seized the can at the bottom, and flipped it into the ice cold water.
It did not work! The can was intact! The simple explanation was that we just could not get the can hot enough to boil the water.
So after some discussion my dad suggested to put the can directly on the flames. At first I was a little nervous about it but willing to try.
So that is what I did and almost immediately that beautiful noise of boiling water emitted from the can and after a minute I put the can flat into the water.
POP! SNAP! CRACK! The beautiful noise erupted from the can at once.
My dad, being the engineer that he is, gave me an interesting mathematical explanation of what is happening here. I won’t go into details but here are the basics of it.
When you boil water the steam rising up is water in gas form called water vapor. Water vapor fills the can pushing out the air. When we all of the sudden put the can in cold water, that water vapor turns into water droplets again which takes up less space. The little droplets of water cannot push on the sides of the can like air can. Thus the pressure of the air outside of the can is greater than that of the pressure inside of the can. As a result the can crushes! It’s scientific!!!
These are the calculations that my dad put on a white board to help explain the experiment. I love it when he talks about science to me!
After the lesson was done my brother wanted to try. He was very happy about that.
I had other cans to crush so I wanted to show you what happens when you do not put the can flat on the bottom of the pan.
The can just sucked up the water and there was not a dent in the can.
I had too much fun crushing all of the cans I could find.
I will say that you should not do any experiment without a procedure for safety. I carefully read this experiment over and over to make sure that I and others would be safe. I also had adult supervision. As with every experiment, have fun!!
