Hand Boilers (Colors May Vary)

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Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. AAPT members receive access to The Physics Teacher and the American Journal of Physics as a member benefit. A hand boiler functions similar to the " drinking bird" toy: [1] The upper and lower bulbs of the device are at different temperatures, and therefore the vapor pressure in the two bulbs is different. The warmth from the fingertips vaporizes some of the red liquid inside the tube, causing it to rise and bubble up into the top chamber as if the liquid was boiling. To force the liquid in the top bulb to go back down into the bottom bulb, hold the top bulb with your hand and the heat of your hand will increase the liquid pressure in the top bulb and force the liquid back down into the bottom bulb.

When holding the bottom of the boiler with your hand, the liquid inside becomes exposed to the heat of your hand and it begins to evaporate. Depending on how the item was packaged, one would grasp the lower bulb to "prove" how passionate one was, or a couple would each grasp one end to see who would force the liquid into the other's bulb. With a hand boiler, the temperature of your hand is enough to cause the liquid to bubble and appear to boil. If you have cold hands the hand boiler will not work as well since the heat from your hand is not high enough to cause the liquid to evaporate and boil. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below.

As the gas continues to expand, the gas will then bubble through the liquid, making it appear to boil. As a result it shoots up the glass tube and settles in the top bulb, since it cannot go any further. When held upright (with the smaller bulb on top), the liquid will move from the bulb with the higher pressure to the bulb with lower pressure. Physikalische Technik oder Anleitung zu Experimentalvorträgen[ Physics equipment or manual of lecture demonstrations] (in German).

The boiler consists of a larger lower bulb and smaller upper bulb, connected together by a twisting glass tube. In popular culture, hand boilers used to be sometimes known as "love meters" because the tube that separates the upper and lower bulbs is twisted into a heart shape and the volatile liquid is colored red. Next, the vapor bubbles (created by the evaporation process) travel up through the glass tube from the bottom bulb and into the liquid in the top bulb.The pulse hammer (German: Pulshammer) and the water hammer (German: Wasserhammer) are illustrated in: Frick, Joseph; Lehman, Otto (1905). If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. Hand boilers date back at least as early as 1767, when the American polymath Benjamin Franklin encountered them in Germany.