Decrepit Old Fool

I drink hot water, which means I often turn the faucet on to get hot while I get a glass out of the cabinet.  This time there was an empty root beer bottle in the sink, right under the aerator.

Normally the water would just burble over the edges and down the sides of the bottle.  But when I turned back to the sink, glass in hand, I found the water shooting up in a neat jet above the bottle.  There was hardly any water at all running down the side of the bottle – just a drop or two.

My guess is that the bottle was empty when I turned the water on, so the down-moving column of water punched through the rising water inside the bottle, creating a turbulent reigion at the bottom concentrating into a sleeve of upward-moving water around the down-moving.  I surmise that the aeration somehow kept the two streams from interfering with each other.

If anyone can think of a way to do something useful with this phenomenon (like mixing chemicals in an industrial process,) it’s all yours.  Go get rich!  (click on the “Read more” link to see the close-up picture)