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APPLIED FIZZICS · Field Notes · EXTRA
A whimsical look at the universe through a glass of Champagne (or your favorite cocktail).
September 22, 2026 · Seattle, Washington
Dear Reader,
Yes, we know this is not how you're supposed to open Champagne. Yes, we know the cork should come out with the sound of a nun's...sigh. But in the interest of science, sometimes you have to break the rules. Besides, it's more fun that way.
Last week, we fired a couple of Champagne corks into the wild in the name of science, and clocked them at about 29 and 36 miles per hour.
Which naturally raised another question:
What happens if you shake the bottle first? Click the image below to watch the video.
So, did shaking make the cork go faster?
Not that we could measure.
The shaken bottle clocked in at about 37 miles per hour—essentially the same neighborhood as our unshaken bottles. In fact, in our side-by-side comparison, the unshaken cork actually pulled slightly ahead.
What shaking did change was considerably more obvious: the Champagne came out like a fire hose.
That's because shaking doesn't meaningfully increase the equilibrium pressure inside a sealed bottle at the same temperature. What it does do is create countless tiny bubbles and activate nucleation sites throughout the wine.
Open the bottle, and suddenly the pressure drops. All those bubbles from shaking suddenly expand in volume by three or four times as the pressure drops by the same factor (Boyle's Law), swelling the body of the wine and forcing it out the top of the bottle.
Then, all that foaming creates even more nucleation sites in the body of the wine, so the dissolved carbon dioxide has even more places to come out of solution, extending the duration of the foam plume.
Pressure launches the cork. Bubbles create the fountain.
Physics Corner
Plus or minus what?
A quick note about that “37.2 mph” we found in the video for the cork speed.
You'll notice that in the video we eventually call the result 37 ± 2 mph, rather than 37.2 mph.
That's because no measurement is infinitely precise. Our speed calculation depends on counting 22 frames of video. If we're off by just one frame, that's an uncertainty of one part in 22, or about 5%. And 5% of 37.2 mph is about 2 mph.
I'm not saying I can't count to 22 accurately. The uncertainty comes from knowing when to start counting the frames. Is it when the cork first starts to move? Is it when the cork clears the bottle? So 22 ± 1 frames seems about right.
Reporting 37.2 mph would imply that we know the speed to a precision our experiment simply doesn't support. If we know the speed is uncertain to ± 2 mph, it doesn't make sense to keep the tenths digit of 37.2 mph. The correct way to state this result is 37 ± 2 mph.
That's a useful habit well beyond Champagne corks. Whenever you see an impressively precise number, it's worth asking:
Plus or minus what?
Let's close by looking at last week's quiz.
Last week's quiz
Question: We found last week that there is a lot of force trying to push the cork out of a Champagne bottle. A great deal of friction is required to keep it in place. Before it is inserted, a Champagne cork is a straight cylinder, wider than the inside diameter of the bottle neck, and is jammed in place with a corking machine. Approximately how much wider is it than the inside of the bottle neck?
A) 10% wider
B) 25% wider
C) 50% wider
D) 70% wider
The answer is D, about 70% wider.
A Champagne cork doesn't start out mushroom-shaped. Before insertion, it's essentially a cylinder, considerably wider than the neck of the bottle. A corking machine compresses it dramatically and forces it into the bottle.
That deformation isn't just packaging convenience. It causes the cork to press hard against the inside of the glass, creating the normal force needed to generate enough friction to resist the force trying to push it back out.
And there's plenty of force to resist. A room-temperature bottle of Champagne can reach pressures approaching 90 psi. Acting over the cross-sectional area of the cork, that's roughly 40 pounds of force trying to launch it from the bottle.
For perspective, a 40 lb dumbbell would be a pretty impressive curl at the gym--imagine an upside-down unpressurized Champagne bottle with a 40 lb dumbbell hanging from the cork. That's the amount of frictional force required to keep the cork in.
The wire cage over the cork (called a muselet, from the French word museler, which means "to muzzle") is important as a failsafe—but the real work is being done by the friction of that tightly compressed cork.
That mushroom shape is something the cork acquires after spending time in the bottle. It didn't go in looking that way.
See you next week, where we're going to change our focus and talk about carbonic acid.
Until next time, stay curious.
Cheers,
Evan Wallace
President, Applied Fizzics Inc.
Makers of The Perlage System®
Want more Champagne science, carbonation experiments, and assorted investigations? Visit the Applied Fizzics Field Notes archive .
