2 August 2009

Harder to Push In than to Pull Out

I don't remember where I learned it, but this is a great trick:

How to extract a cork from the inside of a wine bottle:

Needed: 1 empty wine bottle, 1 cork, 1 plastic bag (similar to that in which vegetables are sold)

1. push the cork into the empty wine bottle (this is by far the hardest part).

2. twist up the plastic bag and thread it into the wine bottle.

3. tip the wine bottle so that the cork is next to the plastic bag, ready to enter the neck of the bottle.

4. blow into the plastic bag just enough to inflate it a little.

5. pull the plastic bag out of the bottle, dragging the cork with it.

It's one of those things that seems completely impossible until you do it. It's trivially easy.