A high school student’s science fair project led to a groundbreaking discovery about the influence of container elasticity on the way fluids drain, unveiling the secrets behind the familiar ‘glugging’ sound.
Curious Case of the Glugging Juice
As Rohit Velankar poured juice into a glass, he heard the sound of ‘glug, glug, glug’ again. Curious by this, the high school student looked more into what happened.
Rohit’s first question was about the elastic properties of the container, and its potential influence on how the fluid drained. This became his science fair project but no one knew then that this simple observation will take the form of a notchwhich is behind the discovery of today.
With the help of his father Sachin Velankar, a professor who teaches chemical and petroleum engineering at DIT University in Dehradun, Rohit took to exploring the scientific reasons that cause that ‘glug gurgling’ sound. They set up an experiment together in the basement of their family home where each wore a virtual reality headset into which they had designed the video game, eager to uncover the principles being enacted.
The Mysteries of Flexible Bottles Revealed
The Velankars found a fun twist on that: That deli containers with a rubber lid drained faster than those with a plastic lid. This led them to deduce that ‘glugging’ happens because the fluid exiting makes a partial vacuum within the bottle.
This flexibility in the container led researchers to dig deeper into how liquid drains off. Some — such as the bags that contain IV fluids or boxed wine pouches — unleashed fluid with nary a glug.
To learn more about a range of local efforts to help frontline workers, read our ongoing series The Helpers: For instance, the Rebotkin family in Fox Chapel has tapped into an Army National Guard 3D printing initiative for essential medical supplies; the Velankars made acrylic bottles with rubber lids using equipment at the makerspace in Fox Chapel Area High School. They could sense every glug by putting a sensor near the hole on the bottom of each bottle to detect pressure oscillations.
The team showed that flexible bottles pour faster, but with bigger and less frequent glugs. The finding could have wide-ranging implications for the ways a range of liquid-containing products are designed, and how they might be developed from beverage containers to medical devices.
Conclusion
The Science Of The Familiar ‘Glugging’ Sound Inspired Rohit Velankar’s First Science Fair Project, And Has Now Resulted In A Major Breakthrough. But by investigating the interplay between container elasticity and fluid dynamics, the Velankars have exposed a profound principle of fluid behavior that is of broad relevance to many industries. Here is a great example for all about how curious thinking, scientific inquiry and collaboration between dad where the father was professor at MIT combined with his son in high school could make groundbraking breakthrough!
