Will I throw a standard glass beer bottle further (assuming all other variables variables are controlled) if it is empty or full?

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Will I throw a standard glass beer bottle further (assuming all other variables variables are controlled) if it is empty or full?

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3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Full, but not by much.

The added mass isn’t so much that you can’t compensate with more force, so you don’t have to worry about throwing it more slowly because it’s heavier.

At the same time, an object with the same speed will have more momentum if it’s heavier. So the full bottle will be more resistant to things like wind.

But then again there’s not much wind and air resistance can do at low speeds to things as dense as glass bottles.

There’s also psychological effects of how much mote of your strength you may or may not allocate to the throw if you know it’s a full bottle or if you feel like you have a fragile piece of glass in your hand. But that’s more complex and less predictable/testable.

Anonymous 0 Comments

No if the same force is applied on a more massive object it won’t travel as far. I understand what you’re getting at, the heavier bottle will be less affected by drag. Likethrowing a paper ball, as you throw it harder you get diminishing returns. So assuming you have a scalable strong arm, yeah a full one CAN go farther, but I think strength is the real limit with a beer bottle vs with a piece of paper it’s drag.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Full, most likely. A source I found says that the average human’s arm weighs 5.3% of their body weight. For me, that would be just over 9 lbs (9.27).

If a “standard” bottle for you is 12oz, the weight of the beer would be about 0.77 lbs

Finally, the bottle itself would weigh about 0.4 lbs

Now, regardless of whether the bottle is empty or full when you throw it, it will experience the same amount of air resistance, since that’s determined by its shape.

Since both the empty and full bottles will experience the same air resistance, the one that goes further will be the one that starts with the most energy when it leaves your hand.

So the question is, does the full bottle leave your hand with more energy or does the empty one?

Going back to the weight figures I gave earlier, the difference in total weight being moved during the throw (arm + bottle + beer) between a full beer and an empty beer is only about 8%. This math is a little more tricky do do, but I don’t think an 8% increase is enough to significantly slow my arm down, meaning that the full and empty bottles would leave my arm at the same speed. Meaning that the full one would leave with more energy, meaning that it would go further.