A Slice of Nostalgia - The Pop Bottle

For some reason (maybe it was after some crazy antics of the kids), I thought about the time I get a hands on physics lesson while we were still living in Brampton.

I was in the kitchen and noticed a half empty pop bottle on the counter or in the fridge. Since nobody else was around and apparantly, because I had some time on my hands to contemplate the pop bottle and its contents, I decided the best thing to do in this case was give it a good hard shake. I'm not sure why I thought this would be a good idea. Maybe I wanted to test the conventional wisdom that, indeed, shaking a bottle of carbonated beverage was not a good idea. Maybe I knew that shaking a full bottle was a bad idea, but nobody ever told me what would happen if you shook a half empty bottle. Or, maybe I just thought it would be fun to boogie with a pop bottle.

Whatever the reason, I picked up the bottle and started to shake it, not once, not twice, many times, HARD. Then, I decided to take off the cap.

Bad idea.

The pop sprayed everywhere. In my face, all over the cupboards, on the dining room ceiling. Apparantly, when you shake even a half empty pop bottle that hard, it builds up enough pressure to shoot the liquid onto the ceiling of the next room.

Conclusion: Conventional wisdom was indeed right, even for half empty bottles.