Hi! When I was younger, I remember my grandpa had this funny little novelty. It was a testtube with a duck on the top, and a bulge at the bottom, partially filled with red liquid. The duck would bob his head several times, until he touched a glass of water, at which point he’d reset and start over again. What was the name of this thing?
Drinking Birds! Nowadays they make the tube into the body of the bird, and the stand into its feet. The resemblance isn’t that great, so they put a top hat on it, to make it look more like a bird.
A similar apparatus is a glass tube made of one bulb with a very long neck set into another glass bulb so that you get a dumbbell shape. There’s fluid in the bottom bulb, but the neck of the top bulb extends below the surface of the fluid so that simply inverting the whole thing won’t make the fluid flow from one bulb to the other. However, if you hold it upright with the bottom bulb in your hand, your body heat makes the air in the bottom bulb expand, forcing the fluid up into the top bulb.
Pretty neat.
Anyone know what those are called?
Thanks
Actually, the only kind of birds that commonly wear top hats are cartoon penguins . . .