[Physics] Pressure inside a plastic bottle filled with water and squeezed by X weight

classical-mechanicsfluid dynamicspressure

I'd like to know how it'd be possible to calculate the pressure inside a plastic bottle filled with water and squeezed by say 20 kg sitting on the bottle, which is lying on its side (so that resistance to deformation does't come to play as much as it'd if it was sitting on a standing bottle).

Thank you

Charles

Best Answer

Since you know the force on the bottle (roughly 200N), you would have to get an approximate area over which this force is distributed. You could try by spreading some ink on either the bottle or the weight to estimate the contact area. While this is not completely correct (the wall of the bottle does redistribute the pressure on the outside to a larger area on the inside), it should give a reasonable estimate to maybe a factor of two or so (but that's a guess of mine, of course). If you want to do it right, connect a long plastic pipe to the bottle cap and measure the height of the water column that gets squeezed out. That's a direct and fairly reliable pressure measurement. Lacking such a measurement, you could estimate from the squirt height. I am sue there are better ideas, still, but these are the easy ones that I can think of of the top of my head.

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