Uploaded July 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This was a fun quick experiment that makes a great physics demo about pressures and state-changes of matter. Everybody's seen water boil on a stove, but at the University of Toledo's Saturday Physics days when I was little, I once saw water boil in a vacuum chamber, and for some reason that stuck with me. A few weeks ago I got the idea to try to boil water at low pressure, not with a real mechanical vacuum pump, but by using a massive column of water as a sort of by-default vacuum generator. I used no heat and no motorized pump, but I boiled water at room temperature using only $25 of hardware store parts and an old heavy-duty waterbottle. Enjoy!
If you want to try this experiment yourself, I've got a bit more information about physically building and setting up the apparatus here: youtu.be/yYBQHFCqw_A
Music:
I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626
This was a fun quick experiment that makes a great physics demo about pressures and state-changes of matter. Everybody's seen water boil on a stove, but at the University of Toledo's Saturday Physics days when I was little, I once saw water boil in a vacuum chamber, and for some reason that stuck with me. A few weeks ago I got the idea to try to boil water at low pressure, not with a real mechanical vacuum pump, but by using a massive column of water as a sort of by-default vacuum generator. I used no heat and no motorized pump, but I boiled water at room temperature using only $25 of hardware store parts and an old heavy-duty waterbottle. Enjoy!
If you want to try this experiment yourself, I've got a bit more information about physically building and setting up the apparatus here: youtu.be/yYBQHFCqw_A
Music:
I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626
