BrainTorque

This might of happened to many of you, and some of you will probably find it silly, but with the right conditions, opening your ketchup bottle may result in an unwelcome surprise.

I have the worst luck when it comes to any type of liquids. At any point, with any liquid, there is a chance I will be wearing it. Now, this might seem a little strange that a grown man has problems with liquids, but what usually happens to me is normally unexplainable, except for a handful of times, this being one of them.

One day, I was sitting on the couch, watching TV. Being lazy, I had made myself some frozen White Kastle Burgers (cooked at the time of consumption of course). Now, when I am consuming these little delectables, I usually squirt a little mustard and ketchup between the “giant” meat patty and hamburger bun, and usually do this two burgers at a time (before eating them and going on to the next two).

When I was on my last set of two burgers, I flipped the cap off my ketchup bottle, and to my surprise (at the time) the ketchup bottle started spewing ketchup everywhere like a volcano, with no assistance from my part. Luckily this time it didn’t land on me, or it probably did (knowing my luck), but in amounts I could not see. Even though none of the ketchup landed on me, I still had plenty of clean up to do.

What happened?

Well, like a lot of people, I enjoy my ketchup cold and straight out of the fridge. Unfortunately, the ketchup bottle was nearing empty and was flipped cap side down in the fridge. When I did take the ketchup out of the fridge, and set it right side up, some of the ketchup remained near the cap at the top, with a vast area of cold air trapped underneath.

As I ate my burgers, and with enough pause between my previous usage of the ketchup and the time of erruption, the air that was trapped under the layer of ketchup began warming up to room temperature, expanding and building up pressure (that is what hot air does, it starts a party, and needs more room to dance).

Thanks to the design of the ketchup bottle, the bottle was well sealed, with no where for the pressure to escape until… someone who is lucky enough to pop the cap open, and witness the volcano of ketchup!