posted
My fiance insists to me that to effectively keep soda/pop carbonated, you should first squeeze out the excess air, then tighten the cap, so that you've got a bottle with big dents in it.
To me, this makes absolutely no sense, because it seems that the extra space made available by the dents in the bottle could more easily fill with carbonated gas escaping from the liquid.
Seems like what would be better is to just tighten the cap with the ambient air trapped in, so that there is more pressure and less room for carbonation to escape.
Someone help me out here.
(BTW, she says that the friend's father who was an engineer or scientist or some crazy crap like that told her about this handy tip. Statements like that make baby Snopes cry.)
-------------------- Mr. Sagan did not go too fars, If you just took the time to scan its, You'd count billions and billions of stars, And billions and billions of planets. Posts: 332 | From: Kansas City, MO | Registered: Jan 2004
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Mr. Furious
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posted
I don't see how that would make any difference whatsoever. If you dent the sides, you're only decreasing the amount of air inside, not increasing the pressure.
There are devices out there that you put on in place of the cap that keep a constant elevated pressure in the bottle, and they work well to preserve carbonation for longer. Denting the sides, though, doesn't seem like it would impact it at all, either way.
quote:Originally posted by Electrotiger: My fiance insists to me that to effectively keep soda/pop carbonated, you should first squeeze out the excess air, then tighten the cap, so that you've got a bottle with big dents in it.
To me, this makes absolutely no sense, because it seems that the extra space made available by the dents in the bottle could more easily fill with carbonated gas escaping from the liquid.
First, denting the bottle will decrease the space, not make extra.
IF the bottle were able to remain rigid and maintain pressure (without the dents popping out), then theoretically less gas would have to escape from the liquid in order to achieve equilibrium (where gas redissolves into the liquid at the same rate that it comes out of solution). Whether the difference is large enough to be measured with anything other than lab equipment, I couldn't say.
IF the increase in gas pressure (from the fizz being released into the open space in the bottle) is sufficient to undent the bottle, then this would actually make the soda go flatter than it would without denting, by the quite measurable difference in volume between a dented bottle and an undented one (perhaps this is the scenerio you were describing when you said "the extra space made available by the dents")
If you really feel like doing the math, you can find the values for Henry's law constant for CO2 in aqueous solutions at room temperature, along with an assumption for a carbonation pressure, here.
buf 'and assume the horse is a sphere' ungla
-------------------- "Pardon him. Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."
George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra Posts: 4847 | From: Washington, DC | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by bufungla: First, denting the bottle will decrease the space, not make extra.
Right, but essentially the squeezed-then-capped bottle is only being held rigid because of the vaccum inside it (that's probably bad terminology, but I can't think of any other way to explain it). So it's like the dent is floppy, and could easily be un-dented by escaping carbonation from the liquid. Which equals flatter soda.
Take a full 2-liter, pour out a glassful, then squeeze the bottle until the soda goes up to the neck, then put the cap back on. This is essentially the situation I'm talking about.
-------------------- Mr. Sagan did not go too fars, If you just took the time to scan its, You'd count billions and billions of stars, And billions and billions of planets. Posts: 332 | From: Kansas City, MO | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
My in-laws do the squeeze-the-bottle thing. I had never seen it practiced before meeting them. I'm not convinced it works, but to each his own. Personally, I like the carbonation, so I prefer to buy cola in single-serving bottles or cans rather than the two-liter.
-------------------- "If I didn't see it and didn't know it was a real news report, I wouldn't believe it. I mean, how nutty can you get?"-Pat Robertson Oct 26, 2006. Posts: 2936 | From: Mean Streets of West Virginia | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I have found that if you do the squeezy thing, the beverage gets flat much, much quicker... and the only reason I have noticed this is because flat soda is nearly as bad as... as...
There is nothing quite as bad as flat soda.
Eeeewwwwwww!!!
-------------------- Opinions aren't excuses to remain ignorant about subjects, nor are they excuses to never examine one's beliefs & prejudices...
Babies are like tattoos. You see other peoples' & they're cool, but yours is never as good & you can't get rid of it. Posts: 5622 | From: Jax, Florida | Registered: Nov 2003
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-------------------- Mr. Sagan did not go too fars, If you just took the time to scan its, You'd count billions and billions of stars, And billions and billions of planets. Posts: 332 | From: Kansas City, MO | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:, the release of gas from the drink will effectively only stop when the air pressure above it is high enough. To reach this pressure, the fizzy drink will have to release more gas than if the bottle were not squeezed, simply because it has to return the bottle to its original shape and volume before the pressure starts rising. So more gas than would normally be released enters the air space before the gas stops coming out of solution.
But if the bottle could be scrunched permanently out of shape so that it maintains this shape irrespective of the internal air pressure, the space above the liquid would be smaller and the drink would need to release less fizz in order to reach the higher pressure needed for equilibrium. More carbon dioxide would remain in solution in this situation.
So squeezing the air out of a flexible bottle will make the drink inside go flat more quickly. But if you can permanently deform it so that it does not return to shape then the fizz will keep slightly better.
Guess I need to work on my writing style, because this is identical to what I said.
buf 'for this I took four different thermo courses' ungla
-------------------- "Pardon him. Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."
George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra Posts: 4847 | From: Washington, DC | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
One of my mum's friends did it and my parents did it for a while until they found it didn't help.
Now when we force carbonate beer (pressurise a keg with CO2 from a canister), we chill it down first because it absorbs the CO2 quicker that way. So keeping it cold after opening would probably be the best way to keep it carbonated unless you can force carbonate it again.
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Turing test failures: 6 Posts: 5481 | From: Decatur, GA | Registered: Nov 2002
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