A Thermal Camera Reveals the Secret of the Drinking Bird Desk Toy
The drinking bird is one of the most mysterious of desk toys. There are a lot of questions surrounding it. How does it work? Where did it come from? Why is it so thirsty all the time. Armed with a thermal imaging camera, Brady Haran of Sixty Symbols decided to take a closer look at the classic toy to reveal its inner workings:
The drinking bird works because of thermodynamics. The bird is made of a top bulb and a bottom bulb, separated by a narrow tube. Inside the bird is a liquid called dicloromethane, which evaporates at room temperature. The bottom bulb contains the liquid, while the top bulb contains evaporated dicloromethane gas.
When the bird is dunked, the water causes the top bulb to cool, and the dicloromethane gas condenses, lowering the pressure in the top bulb. As a result, liquid from the bottom bulb flows into the top bulb, the bird becomes top heavy, and it tips over.
Haran also investigates a few related drinking bird questions. For instance, what happens if you heat the bottom bulb instead of cooling the top bulb? And what happens if you dunk the bird in hot water? It turns out there's more to the drinking bird than meets the eye, unless that eye can do thermal imaging.
Source: Sixty Symbols
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