Okay, so today I decided to mess around with making a “water rooster.” Sounds weird, I know, but I saw this thing online and thought, “Why not?”
First, I gathered my materials. Basically, I needed:
- An empty plastic bottle (I used a 2-liter soda bottle)
- Some bendy straws
- Tape (Duct tape is best, but I only had masking tape)
- Scissors
- A bowl of water
The idea is to make a siphon, kinda. I started by cutting the bottom off the plastic bottle. Just hacked it off with the scissors – didn’t need to be pretty.
Next, I took two of the bendy straws and joined them together. I just stuck one inside the other. They were a little loose, so I wrapped some tape around the connection to make it airtight-ish.
Then, I stuck the straw into the bottle’s neck. The bendy part should be outside the bottle, and the long, straight part should be inside, reaching almost to the bottom (where I cut it off).
This part was tricky: I needed to seal the straw to the bottle neck. Again, duct tape would have been perfect, but I made do with the masking tape. I wrapped it around and around, trying to make it as airtight as possible. It wasn’t perfect, but it seemed good enough.
Now for the fun part! I flipped the bottle upside down and stuck the cut-off end into the bowl of water. I had to make sure the water level was higher than the bendy part of the straw outside the bottle.
Then, I gave a quick suck on the straw to get the water flowing. And… it worked! Water started flowing up the straw, into the bottle, and then out the bendy part, making a little fountain! My own little water rooster!
It wasn’t super powerful, and it leaked a little, but hey, it worked! It’s a pretty cool little science trick, and it kept me entertained for a good while. Definitely something to try if you’re bored and have some spare stuff lying around.
