Eli5: How does wringing or squeezing a cloth make water come out?

Question

Eli5: How does wringing or squeezing a cloth make water come out?

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Answer 1

A dry cloth includes a signfiicant amount of void space between the fibers and threads.

The surface tension between water and these fibers allows water to stick to the fibers, spanning these voids and filling them.

When you squeeze a cloth, you are squeezing the void space into a smaller volume. Because water isn’t compressible, it needs somewhere to go, so it comes out of the cloth.