I’m thinking of like when you bottle wine that’s still fermenting, and it explodes. I understand that the fermentation process raises the air pressure inside the bottle. What I *don’t* understand is how? When you pump air into a balloon, the air pressure rises because there are *more* air molecules entering the balloon.
With wine in a bottle, you have a fixed amount of matter at a certain temperature. I don’t understand how fermentation could increase air pressure in a closed system?
In: Physics
Liquids and solids are much more compact than gasses, so if you replace liquid in a sealed container with gas of equal mass, The gas is going to want to spread out much more and will start pushing on the walls of the container trying to get out.
Think of it like how when you boil water, steam rushes out of the nearest opening because it no longer fits in the kettle. If you could somehow put some water in a balloon and boil it without breaking the balloon, the balloon would inflate despite having the same mass. Though it’s much easier to do that in reverse if you look up what happens to a balloon in liquid nitrogen or something.
Latest Answers