3240: Bottle

Bottle

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Title text: "I know it seems impossible, but the trick is that I sailed in here when I was very young."

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Explanation

This is one of 69 incomplete explanations: This page was bottled recently. Don't remove the cork too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic shows a life sized ship in a bottle sailing along with other sail boats in the sea. The humor comes from the surreality of the situation.

In this comic, Beret Guy is inside a ship in a bottle. A common question when one sees one is "how was it put inside the bottle", due to the small size of the opening in the bottle compared to the ship. The answer is that the ship was assembled (or at least partially unfolded, from more compact original components assembled outside) within the bottle. The components are small enough to pass through the neck of the bottle, and the assembly is likewise done from outside through the neck, usually a difficult task. The title text alludes to this, by saying that Beret Guy grew up inside the bottle to fit (however, this is nonsensical, as he could likely fit into the bottle anyway, and ships do not grow as living things do). On the other hand, it would probably be easier for someone inside the bottle to assemble components of a ship there than for that assembly to be done from outside. This would especially be true of a seaworthy vessel of a size to carry a passenger, rather than a mere model. But it’s possible that he used one of his many strange powers…

The water level in the bottle is lower than the water outside. This is because the bottle will sink until the weight of the bottle and its contents (the water, the boat, and Beret Guy) equals the weight of the water displaced by the bottle. The weight of the missing water in the bottle is consequently equal to the weight of the bottle, the boat, and Beret Guy. If you added water to the bottle in an attempt to make the inside and outside water levels the same, the bottle would just sink deeper. This would continue until the boyancy became less than zero at which point the bottle would sink.

In practice, the bottle is horizontally unstable. The weight of the bottle is not equal along its length (it appears heavier at the neck), and the boyancy at each point will not equal the weight at that point. This is also true of the boats in the cartoon, the difference is that in the bottle much of the weight is the water which is free to move. If the neck of the bottle goes down (to increase the displacement to balance the weight), the water will move to the front of the bottle. This increases the weight at the front which will force the front even deeper. This will continue until the bottle is floating vertically. Beret Guy's boat would appear to fit in the width of the bottle so everything will be fine. This effect (known as the 'free surface effect') has real implications for ships with open decks, such as car ferries, and has been implicated in several disasters such as the 'Herald of Free Enterprise', the 'Princess Victoria', and the 'Estonia'.

Transcript

This is one of 44 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Three small single-masted sailboats are shown, all sailing towards the right. The ones on the left and right are on the ocean, while the one in the middle is contained completely by a large bottle. On the left, Cueball and Megan are in one boat; Cueball is near the stern, possibly holding the tiller, while Megan is before the mast. In the middle, Beret Guy is before the mast in the boat that's inside the giant bottle, with a cork plugging the bottleneck. On the right, Ponytail is directly aft of the mast of the third boat. All the boats are sitting on the water with ripples on the surface, but the water level in the bottle is lower than the rest.]

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Discussion

First P0st! 2A02:6B6F:E226:B00:70BF:8626:D782:45BE 18:40, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

So... is the meniscus drawn correctly, given the difference in shape of the front vs the back of the bottle??? BorQhue del Sol (talk) 18:54, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Left-hand threads on bottle. Why? --PRR (talk) 18:49, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't think those are threads on cap, they're wires around the cork. Barmar (talk) 19:19, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I think it's a (perhaps reverse-threaded) screw-top bottle with no actual screw-top and a cork inserted instead. 81.179.199.253 21:36, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

this transcript is a work of art. raeb 18:54, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Is part of the joke of the alt text the fact that he could easily fit into the bottle at his current age? 24.244.70.174 18:58, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

If he sailed in when he was very young, does that mean the ship grew up with beret guy? Commercialegg (talk) 18:59, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

That does seem to be what he's implying. When he sailed in, the boat must have been small enough to get through the bottleneck. Barmar (talk) 19:15, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

It's a reference to Williams pears, which do grow inside a bottle like that.37.59.41.98 19:41, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Could it be that the boat inside the bottle is the one talking, not Beret Guy? SovereignFinn

It may be worth noting that Beret Guy's boat's sail visibly isn't getting any wind, which of course makes sense. Also, I like that Ponytail's boat has a gaff rig. 63.229.212.46 20:33, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I see a totally different context and joke here: the water level in the bottle is lower than the water level outside. (Which requires a bit of physics thinking to figure out why this would be so.) At first intuitive glance, the water levels should be the same, hence, as the title text says "... seems impossible ...". Then the title text offers a (wrong, but intuitive) explanation for the different water levels: he entered the bottle at very young age when he was lighter (equal levels). Now as an adult he is heavier, thus the whole bottle is heavier and hence it is dipping deeper into the outer water (creating different levels). 31.16.254.255 20:38, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I think it's sort of what would happen with a glass bottle. Glass is far more dense than water. If you part-filled a bottle (sideways, supported) so that it is level with the water it is sitting in and then plug it and release it, the air-filled bottle would then sit lower in the water than its previously established level.

i.e. the trapped water itself is neutral, versus the volume of external water that it displaces. The bottle-material that is below that level is denser than the water it directly displaces, so is negatively buoyant (and the above-the-water glass is less buoyant than the external air). It needs to sink enough that the internal air is also contributing to the displacement of the whole sealed bottle enough to equalise the whole thing.

And, the marvelous thing is that the bottled boat itself is completely neutral. As it's floating at a level that is neutrally buoyant across the (internal) water+air interface, so long as it is floating, thus the whole container weighs (as well as displaces) the same, for any given internal water-level. (i.e. how boat lifts operate... two 'troughs' that essentially weight the same regardless of whether they have a boat in them, that can be hauled up and down essentially perfectly counterbalanced by the paired trough going in the opposite direction. Which I still think is rather clever.) 81.179.199.253 21:36, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
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