How can fermentation break glass if there’s no increase in matter in the bottle?

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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

21 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Fermentation induces chemical changes. You are right that the *same chemical* in a sealed container with no change in temperature will not change pressure, but different chemicals have different properties and fermentation changes the mix of what is in there such that the pressure increases. Basically the yeast poops out gasses that have much higher pressure than the sugar water of whatever variety that you started with.

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