why glass container lid is sucked in on itself

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Howdy all,
Hope this is the right flair.
Yesterday I discovered one of our glass Tupperware containers in the hatch of my wife’s car and the lid is sucked in on itself.
The lid has four clips that snap under the lip of the glass and it’s air tight I would assume. It has remnants of her buffalo chicken chili in it. That has dairy in it.
It’s also been relatively warm here until yesterday when I discovered it. It was 15 degrees F difference.
Thanks in advance for your answers.

In: Biology

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

When you heat up a gas in a closed space, its pressure increases. When you cool it down, the opposite happens. In this case the air in the sealed container cooled down, so the pressure dropped to below normal atmospheric pressure. This is a partial vacuum, so the air ‘sucked’ on the lid. If you heated up the container you would find that at a certain temperature the lid would easily come off again as the contents of the container reach atmospheric pressure.

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