With a waste as simple as the one we find in our homes like an empty plastic bottle, you will not get bored: we can perform incredible experiments with which to surprise our friends.
Our collaborator Miguel Ángel Sabadell explains to us the phenomena that occur inside a simple plastic bottle. Why is it that when we blow a paper ball located on the edge of the bottle to try to strain it inside, does it come out? How can we form a cloud inside a bottle?
If there is something that goes unnoticed, it is the air. We are only aware that it exists on windy days or when we run out of breath. However, its effect has been well known since ancient times. Empedocles showed that air exerts measurable pressure with an hourglass or water clock. In our first experiment it is shown that the bottles are never empty, but filled with air. There is no simpler way to prove its existence. We can see it as a bet that we can make with our friends, and that we are not going to lose: with an open bottle and some paper balls, can we blow the ball into the bottle? A priori , it seems that the ball refuses to enter the bottle, no matter how hard we blow. The reason is that the bottle is not empty, but filled with air. Therefore, we will never be able to put a small ball into an air-filled bottle with one blow.
In the second experiment we recreate what fog is. For this to happen, the tiny droplets that are inside the bottle after shaking them clump together forming that characteristic cloudiness. Why? The match that we have introduced provides the so-called nucleation points, tiny particles (in this case provided by smoke) around which these tiny droplets are grouped: this is how we obtain the fog. This is what theoretical physicists use to detect the passage of subatomic particles. We have built a high-tech research apparatus out of a plastic bottle.
This is the principle on which the cloud chamber is based, as we have explained, one of the first devices used by physicists to detect the passage of subatomic particles , as happened in 1932 with the first detection of the antiparticle of the electron. , the positron, by the American Carl D. Anderson.
When you’re done making these exciting discoveries with a plastic bottle, don’t forget to recycle it!
