Egg in the Bottle | Pressure difference | English

To get the egg into the bottle is very popular and interesting experiment based on air pressure difference.

We place the boiled egg on the mouth of the bottle and see how it gets sucked in. Today we will perform this experiment using household materials and learn the science behind it.

For this experiment, we need wide mouth glass bottle, hard-boiled egg, lighter, Camphor and long Tong.

Choose the glass bottle such that mouth of the bottle is slightly smaller than the size of the Egg. It is not possible to put the egg in the bottle directly.


Now hold the camphor with a long tong and light it up with a lighter or matchstick. Drop it into the bottle.

Place the egg on the bottle. As the camphor extinguishes, the egg will get sucked in the bottle.

Let’s understands how this process takes place.

Since the egg fits snugly on the bottle, it creates a closed system in which the air cannot go in or out of the bottle.

The air molecule in the bottle heats up due to the burning Camphor. Heated air expands in the bottle and occupies more volume.

When the egg is placed on the bottle, the flame extinguishes due to lack of oxygen. The reduced temperature of the air results in contraction of the volume of air thus creating a low-pressure zone in the bottle.

This low-pressure zone creates suction and pulls the egg in the bottle.

Now lets us try the same trick upside down.

Hold the bottle on a flame for a while and place an inverted bottle on the boiled egg. Surprisingly you can lift the egg without touching it with hands.

Instead of the lighter, you can also try with a larger flame. Place the camphor on top of the boiled Egg. Lit the camphor and slowly bring bottle above the flame.

Allow the flame to heat up the air inside the bottle for few seconds and then place a bottle on the flame such that the bottle should touch to the Egg. The camphor flame will go off and an egg will get sucked up in the bottle making the loud sound.

For those who don’t like eggs, you can also try this experiment with a balloon.

Fill some water in the balloon so that the size of the balloon is slightly bigger than the mouth of the bottle. As the membrane of the balloon is much more flexible than the boiled egg, you can see the change in its shape very easily.

Repeat the same procedure as with the egg and see the balloon get sucked in as the camphor extinguishes.

You can do this experiment and amaze your friends. Thank you for watching have a fun!

We hope today you learned something new today. For more fun with hands-on science and math activities visit our YouTube channel. IISER Pune science activity centre.

Team: Ashok Rupner, Chaitanya Mungi, Shraddha Bhurkunde, Neha Apte, Sandeep Jadhav, Music: Dr. Manasi Kulkarni