Drinking candle

A cool party trick or how to get a coin without wetting your hands

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Warn­ing! Un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment:

  • plate;
  • glass;
  • can­dle;
  • tint­ed wa­ter;
  • coin.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Toss a coin on a plate, fill it with tint­ed wa­ter. Put a can­dle on the wa­ter, light it and hold a glass over the top to warm the air in­side. 30 sec­onds lat­er, low­er the glass onto the plate. The wa­ter draws in and the coin can be eas­i­ly re­moved with­out wet­ting your hands. It is im­por­tant that there is enough wa­ter so the neck of the glass is sub­merged. How­ev­er, there should not be too much wa­ter, as not all the wa­ter will be sucked up. Try with the dif­fer­ent amounts of wa­ter be­fore show­ing off to your friends. It is also im­por­tant not to press the glass too tight­ly to the bot­tom of the plate.

Process de­scrip­tion

When heat­ing the air in­side the glass, it ex­pands and some of the air is forced out. Once al­most all of the oxy­gen has burned out, the can­dle goes out and the air be­gins to cool. The pres­sure in the glass de­creas­es, and the ex­ter­nal at­mo­spher­ic pres­sure be­gins to push the wa­ter up into the glass and away from the plate.

Cool ex­per­i­ments are wait­ing for you when you sub­scribe to MEL Chem­istry!