What if a glass of water were LITERALLY half empty?

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Get a copy of What If? 2 and Randall’s other books at: xkcd.com/books
More serious answers to absurd questions at: what-if.xkcd.com/
What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty? The pessimist is probably more right about how it would turn out than the optimist.
Credits
*******
Randall Munroe | Narrator
Henry Reich | Writer & Director
Lizah van der Aart | Illustration and Video Editing
Ever Salazar | Chief Chaos Controller
Know Art Studios | Music & Sound Effects
What If? The Video Series is the official adaptation of the What If? books by Randall Munroe and is produced by Neptune Studios LLC.
Randall Munroe is the author of the New York Times bestsellers What If? 2, How To, What If?, and Thing Explainer; the science question-and-answer blog What If?; and the popular web comic xkcd (xkcd.com). A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time.
Henry Reich is the creator of MinutePhysics and executive producer of MinuteEarth and MinuteFood and founder of Neptune Studios LLC (the parent company for all three youtube channels).
©2024 xkcd, inc.

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23 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 324

@aleattorium 6 часов назад

- Why do you have this weird glass? - Ah, survival of the fittest

@demolisherman1763 5 часов назад

Why are all your dishes mismatched? “Darwinism”

@clockworkkirlia7475 5 часов назад

"Uh, well, in this case, it's an invasive species. it doesn't do the job of being one of my glasses as well as the others, so it *should* have low fitness, but I can't kill it so the ecosystem has different parameters for fitness now than the ones I wanted when I bought my glasses, and this is really good at them. I should not have introduced this glass."

@BromideBride 5 часов назад

@@demolisherman1763 as someone with an annoying disability that causes my hands to have a mind of their own sometimes, it's nicer to think of all my broken crockery merely as genetic misfits than expensive and catastrophic disasters

@ChrisBairKeto 6 часов назад

I insist that the glass is twice as large as it needs to be. It's a prime candidate for optimization.

@aleattorium 6 часов назад

I bestow you the title of fellow software engineer, you can start rewriting systems in Rust and fight on the internet, you also get a JavaScript license to rewrite projects in the newest framework of the moment

@05TE 6 часов назад

The CEO say that the costumers need to get comfortable with the idea of paying full price for half the water due to rising costs of replacing all these broken glasses.

@darklordofsword 6 часов назад

Found the engineer!

@ronspy7171 6 часов назад

Idk about you but I drink exclusively from 800 ml glasses and bottles

@eyv 6 часов назад

Make sure to leave a margin for sloshing.

@Neefew 6 часов назад

Nice to see a What If where no one dies, or is even seriously injured

@jhouck1969 6 часов назад

Did you miss the part about flying shards of glass?

@plasmakitten4261 6 часов назад

He doesn't mention the injuries inflicted by the glass shrapnel tho. this is basically a low-powered grenade

@megarockman 6 часов назад

This video is the censored for kids version -- check the blog for the original ending (spoilers, it's not pretty).

@Avendesora 6 часов назад

Yeah, since it was only the shards from around the bottom of the glass being ejected and not the entire glass exploding, minor injuries. Maybe someone gets suuuuuuper unlucky and loses an eye, but that'd be the exception.

@NukaLemonade 6 часов назад

@@jhouck1969 Optimist: Hey, free shards glass!

@gwest3644 6 часов назад

You know its going to be a roller coaster ride when he goes microsecond by microsecond

@tealtophatvr 5 часов назад

Last time that happened was the baseball vid and we all know how that one ended.....

@Unclevertitle 5 часов назад

This What If hits differently when it's spoken out loud as opposed to read at your own pace. 1:55 "Around this time the glass on the right starts to visibly lift into the air" is the kind of surprising statement that is worth a few seconds of pause to really let that concept sink in. I remember stopping at that point, rereading it to confirm, that yes it just said that, before continuing on. In a video I have to have the reaction time to pause here so I can readjust before continuing. Granted, I'm at an advantage here because I knew what was coming having read the question before in the book, but still. It's a solid example of how the medium changes the message slightly.

@hanchen267 5 часов назад

"YOU TWO ARGUING HAS MADE THE GLASS START TO LEVITATE!!!"

@StoneBox_761a 5 часов назад

Brother if I saw my glass of water start to float, I would start fucking running.

@just_dell 6 часов назад

My guy brought a glass made out of reinforced glass

@michaelleue7594 5 часов назад

A reinforced glass made out of reinforced glass?

@just_dell 5 часов назад

@@michaelleue7594 a reinforced glass made- 🎇

@geolykt 5 часов назад

Could also be one of those rare Superfest glasswares - unlikely, but not impossible.

@LynxSnowCat 5 часов назад

I wonder if there's a non-destructive way to read its sodium content/distribution.

@joedingo7022 5 часов назад

@@geolykt Sometimes weird Chinese copies of such things find their way into American stores, but it's just as likely it was polycarbonate or some other glass-like polymer.

@Salmonator2000 6 часов назад

For some reason I'm disappointed that it didn't result in something that could be described as "an incident".

@Thermalions 6 часов назад

The specifics matter incident

@Eshtian 5 часов назад

Not since... the accident.

@halyoalex8942 5 часов назад

well this version omits it for reasons of youtube TOS.

@Phyrre56 5 часов назад

If the glass were larger, at some point the force involved is sufficient that the sound and shockwave could become an incident. You're creating a non-incendiary explosion. All you need for incident purposes is to scale it up.

@laureng2110 5 часов назад

@@halyoalex8942 The TOS does not say "don't mention people being injured". There are videos on here about natural disasters and industrial accidents.

@ampa-3612 6 часов назад

It would most likely contain approximately as much non-water as it would water.

@globalincident694 6 часов назад

But air is up to 4% water so it doesn't really

@Pablo360able 5 часов назад

How much is any amount of nothing?

@TheOtherBill 5 часов назад

This was a very good place to use the word "approximately".

@Lianthrelle 6 часов назад

@4:07 the "shwoosh" and "ducks" sounds perfectly combine to hear "shucks" which had me super confused for a second.

@Juanni 6 часов назад

what’s the actual word? I only hear “shucks”

@Juanni 6 часов назад

WAIT I’m stupid you said it’s “ducks”

@Lianthrelle 5 часов назад

@@Juanni it's in the captions, where are manually added on this vid it seems. Good job! 💯!

@RedTail1-1 5 часов назад

Well he did say shucks at the end.

@Lianthrelle 5 часов назад

@@RedTail1-1 Check the closed captions. The word is "ducks"

@LordPhobos6502 6 часов назад

This is great 😁❤ Please do neutron star matter next??? Every astronomy textbook says something inane like "if you had a teaspoon of neuton star matter, it would weigh as much as a mountain." But... they never state what would HAPPEN if you had a teaspoon of neutron star matter? Would everything nearby get sucked in by gravity? Would it explode? Would it just radiate beta radiation? If do how much? Enquiring minds want to know: what would happen if you actually had a teaspoon of neutron star matter???

@HeraldOfOpera 6 часов назад

To better fit the nature of this blog, ask what would happen if you tried to put it in your tea.

@gilly_the_fish 6 часов назад

He actually has answered this question in his first What If book. The question there is titled: If a bullet with the density of a neutron star were fired from a handgun (ignoring the how) at the Earth's surface, would the Earth be destroyed? He actually covers what it would look like if you tried to touch it. It's one of my favorite chapters. Since all of his videos so far have been previously answered in his blog or one of the books, it's likely that the neutron star question will eventually make it to RU-vid, too.

@EmilySmirleGURPS 5 часов назад

There's no pressure left around it to keep it compressed into its degenerate state, so it's going to expand veeeery rapidly ("explode"), probably resulting in some of those neutrons fusioning with atmospheric gasses along the edge of the wavefront, others decaying into proton/electron pairs again (and some of those fusioning) and just generally being a gigantic space kablooey. Briefly things would be drawn towards its centre of mass and the top layer of atoms on the teaspoon might start the process of spagettification or tidal disruption, but the explosion is going to make that a bit of a moot point as it fixes the density gradient by distributing everything. Everything in the neutronium, and everything else in the area. If there's anything coherent left over it might be iron dust, but I don't think so. My money is just on high-speed neutron nonsense.

@hive_indicator318 5 часов назад

@@EmilySmirleGURPSthere's no pressure around a neutron star. It stays together because of gravity

@deinauge7894 5 часов назад

@@hive_indicator318yes but most of that gravity is gone when you have only a teaspoon of it 😊 there is a lower limit for the mass of a neutron star

@NamyreSean 5 часов назад

Ah, this ep is less bloody than the article I see. One caveat is there's no "hey, free glass!"

@midnightstudio3742 6 часов назад

Always get a laugh out of these, loved the first "What If?" book and will definitely check the new one out too!

@laalaa99stl 6 часов назад

I want to believe that this is how MC Water Hammer got his name.

@ChrisBairKeto 5 часов назад

can't touch this... because it's a vacuum (for a very short time)

@l9m241 6 часов назад

Meanwhile the janitor has to clean that up. And there's broken glass on the floor and table. How annoying!

@5nowChain5 5 часов назад

And lots of blood...😮

@matthewl5434 6 часов назад

Finally caught one of these the moment it was uploaded, had a copy of the original book and I miss it to this day

@RedTail1-1 5 часов назад

Buy another? I don't understand why you wouldn't get another copy.

@vlad_makes_stuff 6 часов назад

I was literally thinking about this on the bus on the way home

@phaedrus1117 6 часов назад

This was my all-time favorite question from the website.

@EmilySmirleGURPS 5 часов назад

1:54 "Around this time the glass on the right starts to visibly lift into the air" is one of my favourite "What if?" lines ever, hands down. Timing is everything, and even the written answer delivers it at exactly the right time. :mwa: chef's kiss.

@mgancarzjr 5 часов назад

Watched a guy repeatedly slapping the lid-side of a Frappucino bottle in a convenience store. Was not disappointed.

@Lone_Rocket 5 часов назад

Human beings. The only creatures that will ask pointless questions for no other reason than for curiosity.

@theartificialidiot6276 5 часов назад

For the glass that won't break, install a new shelf labelled "UNBREAKABLE GLASS: DO NOT BREAK".

@peppapig9987 6 часов назад

One of the more tame videos

@alveolate 6 часов назад

yea i half expected those glass shards to draw blood

@RsFanficReadings 6 часов назад

@@alveolate They did in the original. I liked the 'Hey, free glass!' line.

@Smitology 5 часов назад

@@alveolate pretty sure they did in the original, i was waiting for that to show up in the video but ig they're keeping it more pg?? idk way more deadly situations have been covered in the past

@denisshulakov 6 часов назад

love the sound effects

@vitorbortolin6810 6 часов назад

This Glass is problably superglass manufactored in the east germany. It is basically old gorila Glass. Amazing story!!

@BrianMPrime 5 часов назад

3:31 I guess you actually own that glass now

@demolisherman1763 6 часов назад

I think this is the least destructive What If video I’ve seen

@drashkeev 6 часов назад

Old Soviet joke I heard my grandparents tell: The optimist studies English, the pessimist studies Chinese, and the realist studies physics.

@5nowChain5 5 часов назад

This! Is SOO very True... Today. RuZZian woman better start getting used to the idea their future husbands will be Chinese Men.

@JoeKhol 6 часов назад

"This isn't my glass! My glass was full! And bigger!" (with apologies to Terry Pratchett :D )

@IsYitzach 6 часов назад

I've used this example a time or two in momentum conservation questions.

@SittingOnEdgeman 6 часов назад

This is one experiment - I don't know how you'd do it - I'd love to see someone recreate the glass with the vacuum on the bottom in real life because that would be surreal to see in real life.

@ThePrimordialAbyss 5 часов назад

I'm surprised that the glass shards didn't pierce throught the observers and unaliving them

@laureng2110 5 часов назад

We're grown-ups, you can say kill here.

@Mis7erSeven 5 часов назад

Optimist: The glass is half-full. Pessimist: The glass is half-empty. Chemist: The glass contains 50% H2O, 39% N2, 10.5% O2, 0.4% Ar and 0.1% CO2.

@kirilrotan7653 5 часов назад

It is a bit unusual for Chemist to use volume when talking about ratios.

@Camaro_V8 6 часов назад

Can't wait to explain this to my accounting major roommate while we're sitting at the dinner table

@fireballflig 6 часов назад

So, what's the case result as shown in the glass on the left at 0:40 where the vacuum is on the side of the glass?

@abraveastronaut 6 часов назад

Probably similar to the vacuum-on-top scenario, but it also slides a bit towards the side that had the vacuum.

@pafnutiytheartist 5 часов назад

To be fair to the optimist, this scenario isn't nearly as destructive as most other what ifs.

@JadianRadiator 6 часов назад

I've been wanting to see this one on RU-vid ever since I discovered xkcd's RU-vid series version of his what ifs.

@SuperGamersgames 6 часов назад

Another really good video from xkcd! :D

@MmmMmph1968 6 часов назад

I’m sure nothing bad will happen in this What If!

@PrauxJrYT 6 часов назад

Now do it with the ocean

@EthyrielY 5 часов назад

That exploded less violently than expected for a “What if?”

@Sonnell 5 часов назад

Perhaps your unbreakable glass was "superfest". An east german glass, kinda similar to gorilla glass.

@BromideBride 5 часов назад

The true optimist settles for a smaller glass.

@sagacious03 5 часов назад

Super excited for this analysis video! Thanks so much for uploading! Looking forward to more like this from you in the near future! Might comment more later!

@NuSpirit_ 5 часов назад

Now I have separate question. What if under every ocean or body of water suddenly all water below 2 or 3km disappears and only Vacuum remains there?

@5nowChain5 5 часов назад

Its going to be a VERY VERY BAD day for all Sailors.Oh, and its going to rain an awful lot, probably for more than 40days.

@RealCadde 6 часов назад

The glass is neither half empty or half full. It has reached a stable equilibrium. And it's currently twice the size it needs to be. And there enough space for twice the amount of liquid, which is always a good buffer to have. And if you always have twice as much as you need of something, you can lose everything you need and still survive. The key word being "need" because that's different from "everything" without a qualifier.

@shriyash2871 6 часов назад

What if water present in body gets halved?

@throwaway9208 5 часов назад

Great vid, my only minor remark is that it'd be nice to also have metric units in there. Not all viewers are from the areas where imperial is used!

@user-wm3hu7lo1g 5 часов назад

Quite unexpectedly, this didn't end with the whole world exploding

@SophieBK 5 часов назад

Pessimist: "There are glass shards all throughout my water cup." Optimist: "Yeeeeeeyyyy free glass shards :D"

@Geist1337 5 часов назад

I'm going to guess since it's an area of negative pressure the glass would probably implode before the water could rush in to fill the empty space.

@zachariahdearing9611 5 часов назад

A couple of follow-up questions: A) What if, instead of glasses, we were dealing with steel barrels? B) What if there was an airtight lid on top of them?

@jobah619 6 часов назад

The zoologist sees a potential environment for extremophiles.

@ulitharid8907 5 часов назад

I genuinely expected that to be MUCH more violent, I guess physics isn't ALL world ending threats and being vaporized before you even notice, sometimes it's just some spilled milk, nothing worth crying over.

@AaronALAI 5 часов назад

It always depends on the state of the glass prior to observation. If it was filled up to the half way point, it is half full. It it was emptied to the half way point, it is half empty. Without information about the previous state of the glass, no conclusion can be made about the glass being half full or half empty.

@Gravitatis 5 часов назад

that seems kinda stupid

@mixingcat5213 6 часов назад

I'm so happy to see these again animated. These are my childhood memories that lead me into physics today.

@boiledelephant 5 часов назад

Thanks for making me feel old! I read these books after graduating, thought they were wonderful. I'm glad to know they've inspired people to pursue careers.

@jsloanhpi 5 часов назад

Once again Randall demonstrates his keen ability to end with great zingers.

@johnwbuxton 5 часов назад

You could also consider the space between atoms to be "emptiness", so another scenario would be a glass filled so full with water molecules that it is half the density of a neutron star. My guess is that wouldn't end well for the observers.

@GgdtvBfunc 6 часов назад

Hey Im sure someone said it, but you should check if that unbreakable glass you got is the guerilla glasses from east germany, i think they occasionally pop up in thrift stores

@laalaa99stl 6 часов назад

Left as an exercise for the reader: design a vacuum shape that would maximize damage to the glass upon its sudden appearance. I'm thinking sphere in the middle. Or maybe coil.

@Rook69-od9bn 5 часов назад

Wouldn't it become a black hole if it was half empty? Accounting for no spaces between particles in 1 half and vaccum in another

@ExpatZ266 6 часов назад

Nice! knew it would break but that lifting then throwing part, awesome!

@Banana_Slugcat 5 часов назад

1- What if every cloud on Earth was concentrated in one single place/country? How strong would the rain be? A flash flood or something even worse? 2- How heavy can rain get? Can rain become so strong you almost get pinned down by it or is there a limit on how much it can rain on one area per minute?

@boiledelephant 5 часов назад

#2 is a good question. You'd expect the limit to come from water vapour and atmospheric depth - only a certain amount of water can precipitate out of air, and only a certain amount of air can exist vertically in an atmosphere and still be dense enough to hold water vapour. But if you introduce weird, sudden changes in temperature, intuition becomes inadequate. You should email these questions to him.

@3possumsinatrenchcoat 6 часов назад

i imagine it would be rather hard to drink, personally.

@avitraangelica9278 5 часов назад

I always loved this question. ^v^ Fun to see it in video form!

@TommyLikeTom 5 часов назад

I feel like I went to university with this guy. I read all of his comics when I was at uni like 15 years ago

@ozzie_goat 5 часов назад

Meanwhile, the engineer in the next room over is pondering how to make the glass fly faster

@Hagen-HenrikKowalski 5 часов назад

are you not missing cavitation bubbles forming on the bottom maybe ? (meaning the left glass) Actually, I dont't think that the waterhammer effect is what causes the partytrick it could as well be those cavitation bubbles

@MonkeySimius 5 часов назад

Honestly, that wasn't nearly as physically violent as I was expecting. The glass launching into the ceiling, while it makes sense, was surprising though.

@Mayor_Delacroix 5 часов назад

Cool video! The story of the unbreakable glass reminds me of Superfest glass from East Germany

@drillerkiller9 6 часов назад

I interpreted the original question more in the sense that the glass was full with water, then, all of a sudden, became half empty, so was hoping to get some insightd into what happens when water suddenly disappears

@Thermalions 6 часов назад

You start questioning your reality

@jamesgregsy 5 часов назад

"the pessimist is probably more right about the answer than the optimist" Randall, we know... You're answering the question, so we know...

@coryman125 5 часов назад

Finally someone pointing out the linguistics answer! I've been saying this for years. It's like driving somewhere and saying you're halfway there, it would be weird to say it the other way

@Gravitatis 5 часов назад

i feel like theres a difference between the measurement itself and any previous actions involved with the glass

@georgwrede7715 5 часов назад

I'd really want to see this done for real.

@TheHaydough 5 часов назад

Put the new glass in the middle of your glass shelf, then it will be more of a center piece of the shelf rather than an oddity!

@PAPO1990 6 часов назад

Still my favourite "What If?" it does get a little annoying to have to explain the whole thing anytime I respond with "duck" though :P

@Jonassoe 5 часов назад

Pessimist: "The glass is half empty" Optimist: "The glass is half full" Optometrist: "The glasses are half off"

@Fractal227 5 часов назад

This channel is the best.

@Wo1fie 5 часов назад

Thank you for saying water is nearly incompressible. So many people affirm that water is completely incompressible.

@herrhartmann3036 5 часов назад

Someone who sees the glass as half full is not a true optimist❗ The true optimist realizes, that the glass has the capacity to receive the same amount of water again, that it already contains.

@jellyking3260 6 часов назад

Optimist team

@CanadianGamer.01 6 часов назад

The Glass is everything. The glass is half full, half empty, and completely full at the same time.

@snhjhkvd 6 часов назад

What if the vacuum was the size of a human? I always wondered it with regards to magical teleportation. What if one second there is a full person, and then they instantaneously disappear completely without any additional effects (that is: except for the sudden void where they were).

@Thermalions 6 часов назад

And what happens to the air on the other end where you instantaneously materialise? That space wasn't actually empty.

@umikaliprivate 5 часов назад

What if there was no ceiling, how high would the top of the glass get?

@Purpleturtlehurtler 6 часов назад

What if c was lowered to the third cosmic velocity?

@Davtwan 6 часов назад

Yaaay, the main four are here including Beret Guy!

@mmicoski 5 часов назад

Now the hard question: what if the empty half contains the philosophical nothing: no air, no quantum fields oscillating around zero, no laws of physics?

@Kronman590 5 часов назад

Everyone survived! What a miraculous video

@danielebartoli3989 6 часов назад

Could you pleas do "what if you collected every penny or every type of currency currently laying on the ground" thanks I love your videos

@thetay24 6 часов назад

But what if the glass is some how half empty vertically instead of horizontally?

@Thermalions 6 часов назад

The glass rises slightly (offset by air rushing in from the top) and moves horizontally at the same time, smashing into the other two glasses causing an even larger mess to clean up. Hopefully the observers don't end up with a shard of glass sticking out of their jugular; but if so, would it be the optimist or the pessimist?

@thetay24 6 часов назад

@@Thermalions the odds would be whoever its closest to

@Dampfmaschiene 5 часов назад

Is the undestroyed glass maybe a "Superfest"? These are specially hardened and were made in germany.

@RGGaming940 6 часов назад

Remember, duck!

@segadoeswhatnintendont 6 часов назад

Or else thy end will be now!

@nonime9566 5 часов назад

My physics teacher lended me the book some years back and I remember reading this one

@stella.excite 5 часов назад

But how fast specifically does the glass take off? If this was done outside, how high would it fly?

@YourLocalCapybara69 5 часов назад

least deadly what if video

@dante1 5 часов назад

Is the upward movement, in the glass where the bottom is a vacuum, dependent on the shape of the glass? if it didn't widen toward the top of the glass would the glass still rise? If instead it widened toward the bottom of the glass or maintained the same diameter throughout I would assume the glass would not move upward. In other words, if there were no way for air to push from underneath the cup, because there is no air under the cup would it still be able to rise? If anyone can guide me to some sort of insight on this I would appreciate it.

@blacktimhoward4322 5 часов назад

It's the sound effects for me

@drdca8263 6 часов назад

The physicist “shucks”???

@VmasterVX 5 часов назад

What if someone just says the glass is half? Is the vacuum on the left and water to the right? Or the other way around? What happens when the glass is half like that?