Oh, competition is the great motivator.

It turns out there’s another Cork in the Water website. Don’t bookmark that one by mistake! And although it has no dedicated cork in the water website, the City of Carlsbad, California does use its precious Internet resources to give citizens this set of instructions on how to “drive your friends crazy” with the right mixture of cork and water:

Experiment #3 – Center the Cork
This trick is guaranteed to drive your friends crazy!

Materials: a glass, some water, a cork

1. Fill an empty glass almost to the top with water.

2. Ask the kids to float the cork in the center of the glass. No matter how hard they try to center the cork, it will drift to one side.

3. Gently pour in some more water so that the surface bulges over the top edge of the glass. Place the cork in the water. Presto! It moves to the center where the water level is highest — on top of the bulge. The water forms a convex surface — the bulge — because of surface tension.

It’s easy to see how this simple experiment could — as “guaranteed” by the City of Carlsbad — drive someone crazy. Picture this: It’s 10 pm. You’re packing the car for an 18 hour drive to Carlsbad, California. You plan to leave at 6 am the next day. Your precocious young son, anxious to find out more about this exciting destination, quickly navigates the web as follows: City of Carlsbad Official Site > Public Works Department > Municipal Water District > “Water Experiments for Kids”.

You’re almost finished packing. Your son walks up to you with a smile on his face and says: “Daddy? Can I have a glass, some water, and a cork?”

You respond: “A cork? Where the hell am I going to find a cork? Do you want me to open a bottle of wine and get you a goddamned cork? Is that what you want? Jesus H. Christ, why can’t you ask for a baseball glove like normal boys your age. What’s wrong with you? What the hell are you doing up, anyway? It’s nearly eleven. Don’t you know we have to get up at five in the morning?”*

The City of Carlsbad blames “surface tension” for this situation. But clearly this tension goes much deeper than the surface.

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*Since my father is one of the two people who read this blog, I must clarify that he would never behave this way. He would have found a cork (the gullible fool!).