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Why doesn’t water flow out of a small hole from the bottom of a bottle?

Physics Asked by Max123456789 on April 24, 2021

So today I was in basketball practice and a friend of me showed me his regular plastic water bottle. When he squeezed it at the middle of it a small stream of water started flowing out from the bottom of it. When he stopped squeezing the flow of water out of the bottle stopped. I was annoyed as I wasn’t really able to explain why the water doesn’t flow out of the bottle if you don’t squeeze it. Why does this happen?

Thank you in advance!

[I did this experiment in my home and here are two photos: 1. I don’t squeeze the bottle and 2. I squeeze the bottle and water flows out]
(https://i.stack.imgur.com/maNXR.jpg)enter image description here
2nd photo here
(https://i.stack.imgur.com/Czrcx.jpg)

One Answer

Water will leak out of the hole until the pressure just inside it equalizes with that just outside (it will actually stop a bit before that due to surface tension, which can hold back a small pressure difference when the water surface bulges out through the hole). If there is, say, a 10 cm column of water above the hole, that contributes an excess pressure over atmospheric of 1 kPa, which will push water out until the air space above the water expands by about 1%, at which point the decrease in air pressure cancels the hydrostatic pressure from the water.

It the hole were much bigger, air would be able to get in there, and, glug glug, the water would all come out. But because of surface tension, you can’t simultaneously get water to go one way and air the other through a small hole.

Answered by Ben51 on April 24, 2021

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