Fountain Connection

Hero of Alexandria described his compressed-air fountain principle in the first century A.D., but it took the invention of the two-liter soda bottle to make it this easy to demonstrate. Clear straight plastic tubing (the curled tube shown to the left is no longer available) and a special connector convert your plastic soda bottles into an erupting fountain each time the bottles are inverted. The contributing principles of vacuum formation and air compression can be explored with additional suggested exercises.