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Nicholas Ray

AP Statistics B6

December 14, 2016

Which volume of water will result in the highest

amount of flips landed?

Bottle B, with 1/4 fill water, will have the

highest amount of flips landed.

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Mile Senatores bottle flip may have been an easy out to a school talent show, but it

flipped into a new internet sensation that landed head on. Every almost empty bottle gained

highly competitive value, and any flat surface was an flip-off arena. On a bright, summer swim

meet, my friends and I flipped bottles to pass the long hours in between events. Although your

skills may have been different, the amount of water varied each time we played, and the effect of

this was not well understood. The science behind the classic bottle flip comes in two parts:

angular momentum and fluid dynamics. Nathaniel Stern, assistant professor of physics and

astronomy at Northwestern University, said that the water inside the bottle then needs to react to

that angular momentum, (Zarracina). The correct amount of water stored inside the bottle would

allow for just the right amount of reaction to allow the center of mass of the water bottle to fully

rotate the angular momentum it is given from the toss. Water also has the special properties, and

according to Stern, the water bottle pushes on the water and starts trying to transfer its angular

momentum to the liquid, (Zarracina). Because the water can move freely in the bottle, it takes

some of the angular momentum of the bottle and slows the force enough to land square on the

ground. Too much water would have too large of mass that slows the bottle too much, and too

little water would have not enough mass to slow the bottle enough. Not only is this a fun physics

problem, but also way to win a very competitive game of bottle flip from the start, no matter the

skill and place. From swim meets to classrooms, this experiment will show which bottle has the

best amount of flips with 5 tries. So, what is the best amount of water to keep inside a bottle in

order to get the highest amount of flips landed? The science of angular momentum and fluid

dynamics tends to report 1/3 to 1/4 the total capacity of a 16.9 fluid ounce bottle, and this
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experiment will put it to the test. Five bottles will have varying amounts of water, bottle A with

no water, then going up each bottle by a quarter till bottle E with all 16.9 fluid ounces of water.

Once all bottles are tested, bottle B with 1/4 filled water will have the highest flips landed.

To get a good sample of bottle flippers, I used the alpha list of each class of 2017 and

took samples from each class such that it represented the proportion of the whole population with

this blocked experiment. After computing this random sample in RStudio (A), I Facebook

messaged all of the subjects about the experiment and asked for them to participate. By doing

this, I may of elicited a bias to those who have access to Facebook or have an account, although

this was the best way to access students at LASA without emails or phone numbers. Then, after

responding with dates to test, each subject flipped each bottle 5 times in a random order that was

generated in RStudio (A). Then the number of flips landed was recorded and later uploaded to

RStudio, and the subject left a signature on the data sheet (B). After this I only got 21 out of the

60 I reached out via facebook and in the hall, and I was a little off my goal of 30 subjects. These

subjects also mainly consisted of seniors, for the previous bias of having a Facebook that I could

access and also that the students near my grade are more comfortable doing a school experiment

for me and causes convenience and nonresponse bias.

After plugging the data from the experiment into RStudio, I first found the means of each

bottle A-E and plotted them in the graph below.

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The mean is the average amount of bottle flips the bottle got in the whole experiment.

Bottle B was the highest, as expected, with 1.1905 flips. Bottle C was second, with 0.3333 flips.

Bottle D and E were tied for third, with 0.0476 flips. And bottle A came in last, with 0 flip mean,

because no one could land bottle A. This means that on average, if you flip bottle B 5 times, you

should average out to at least one successful land. Bottle B also has a significantly higher mean

than the rest of the bottles, showing that on average bottle B with 1/4 filled water flips better.
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Another aspect of the data is the variance of the flips. Below is the graph of the variances

of each bottle plotted next to each other, A-E.

The variance is the expected square deviations of the independent variable, water in the

bottles, from the mean. Bottle B had the highest, with 1.6619 flips squared. Bottle C was second,

with a variance of 0.4333 flips squared. Bottle D and E again tied for third with 0.0476 flips

squared. And bottle A was last with a variance of 0 flips squared. This means that if you flipped

bottle B 5 times, you should expect to vary 1.6619 flips squared from the mean, which in this

case is 1.1905. This variance is significantly higher than the other bottles, meaning that bottle B

varies more from the mean than the rest of the bottles. This could be caused by the large number
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of 0 successful flips skewing the data back to zero from a high mean. The other bottles had lower

means, so the subjects that flipped none all around did not increase the variance as dramatically.

I also graphed the boxplots of each bottle, to see their minimum, first quartile, median,

third quartile, and maximum values compared to each other. Below is each bottles graph. A-E.
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Bottle A had no successful flips, so all the data fell at 0 flips. Bottle B had its minimum

and first quartile at 0 flips, its median at 1 flip, its third quartile at 2 flips, and its maximum at 4

flips. Bottle C had all of its data fall at 0 flips, but there was two outlier at 1 and 2 flips. Bottle D

and E both had all of their data at 0 flips, and both had one outlier at 1 flip. This should that
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every bottle by B had most of their data at 0 flips, while B had its data spread out more. This

graphically shows that bottle B not only had a higher mean, but its median average was higher, at

one flip, and also not all centered at 0 flips but spread out in the positive direction. This again

shows how bottle B has the highest flips made, using median and spread.

Some confounding variables could be skill of bottle flipping. Maybe it is not the science

behind the angular momentum and fluid dynamics that gave Bottle B the highest flip rate, but the

fact that experienced bottle flippers are use to this amount of water. The control I used was the

empty bottle, and every other bottle with water was a treatment of water I added to bottle to try

and elicit a change in flip rate, There was no placebo in this case. I used replication by asking

many subjects to be in the experiment, and receiving around 20. I used randomness in the

selection of the subjects and also in the order in which they received the treatments, a type of

matched pairs like the eat all method where every subject flipped each bottle 5 times, but in

random orders. All of this together not only was implemented because of being a statistical

experiment design, but to help prove causation of water volume and flip rate.

Although dragging the statistics down, the subjects that flipped no bottles successfully do

make up the unskilled section of the population that I expected to see. Not including this section

may increase the means of the bottles, but other than bottle B the rest had 16 or more subjects

that flipped none successfully. Having a sample from LASA may have added a bias that could

account for the increased number of zero flippers, so expanding the population may help fix this.

Another this is that subjects only got 5 trials at a bottle, and this may not of allowed enough trials

to produce a flip. This can be fixed by having the subjects flip 10 or more times each, although
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this may lengthen the experimental process, it will generate larger statistics. But from this

experiment, bottle B is shown to have a significantly higher mean than the other bottles, and

supports the hypothesis that bottle B would have the highest flips landed, on average, supporting

my hypothesis.
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Works Cited:

Zarracina, Josh Rosenblat and Javier. "The Complex Physics of That Viral Water Bottle Trick,

Explained." Vox. Vox, 26 May 2016. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

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Appendix A: RStudio Graphs and Code

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Nine <- LASARoster[LASARoster$Grade==9,]

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Ten <- LASARoster[LASARoster$Grade==10,]

Eleven <- LASARoster[LASARoster$Grade==11,]

Twelve <- LASARoster[LASARoster$Grade==12,]

sample(Nine$Student.Name, size=19)

sample(Ten$Student.Name, size=14)

sample(Eleven$Student.Name, size=14)

sample(Twelve$Student.Name, size=13)

mymatrix <- matrix(nrow=60, ncol=5)

for (i in 1:60){

mysample <- sample(1:5, size=5)

mymatrix[i,] <- mysample

means <- c(mean(Flip$A), mean(Flip$B), mean(Flip$C), mean(Flip$D), mean(Flip$E))

plot(means, main="Means of All Bottles", xlab="Bottles A-E", ylab="mean")

summary(lm(means~vars))

vars <- c(var(Flip$A), var(Flip$B), var(Flip$C), var(Flip$D), var(Flip$E))

plot(vars, main="Variance of All Bottles", xlab="Bottle A-E", ylab="variance")

boxplot(Flip$A, main="Boxplot of Bottle A", horizontal=T, ylab="Number of Flips")

boxplot(Flip$B, main="Boxplot of Bottle B", horizontal=T, ylab="Number of Flips")

boxplot(Flip$C, main="Boxplot of Bottle C", horizontal=T, ylab="Number of Flips")

boxplot(Flip$D, main="Boxplot of Bottle D", horizontal=T, ylab="Number of Flips")

boxplot(Flip$E, main="Boxplot of Bottle E", horizontal=T, ylab="Number of Flips")

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