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Physics

Physicists have worked out how to pour water as quietly as possible

The sound of pouring water into a cup can be tamped down by changing the height of the pour or the diameter of the spout, but physicists have found that changing just one of these never makes it fully silent

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

30 November 2023

Can you pour without making a sound?

Shutterstock / lavsketch

The key to pouring water very quietly from a teapot is not just holding the spout close to the cup, but creating a perfectly smooth stream of liquid.

Mouad Boudina at Seoul National University in South Korea drinks tea every morning. Repeatedly pouring tea into a cup from a traditional teapot from his hometown in Morocco made him wonder what makes this process noisy. To find out, he and his colleagues experimented with pouring water in the lab.

They filled an acrylic cylinder with…

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