A white bottle with clear, blue, green and red stripes resting sideways on a gray desk. It’s difficult to keep your eyes on the bottle as it flips up and down several times before settling into place on top of itself again.
Do you know the water bottle flip song name?
After approximately two seconds, there’s a satisfying “squink” when the cap pops off and water pours out of the mouth of the straw like in a miniature fountain.
This simple, yet clever “water bottle flip challenge” caught my attention on Twitter this morning. The series of tweets led me to a YouTube video of someone trying the same thing.
The main difference is that the bottle tumbles around while it’s being flipped and can even end up upside down (though not nearly as much as when you do it in real life).
Here are some more information about the Water Bottle Flip Challenge–
1. The water bottle flip challenge is actually the name of a song.
It’s the title track from Kehlani’s 2017 EP You Should Be Here. Kehlani performed it on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in May of that year. The song is about not being able to get over a breakup and wishing for a second chance.
It uses specific lines from other classic breakup songs, alluding to some of the most famous lyrics from them (for example, “No Scrubs” by TLC: “Don’t go chasing waterfalls”).
2. You can’t flip a bottle of water like this.
A water bottle flip challenge would be pretty difficult to perform without having some sort of a base to stand on.
It’s not as though you can simply just hold a water bottle up in the air while trying to flip it, nor could you use your arm to keep the bottle from falling on its side.
3. The examples on Twitter and Youtube are staged, not real.
This stunt is probably best viewed from a safe distance as well as with an eye toward safety. You really don’t know what the bottle might do when it tips or bounces off a wall.
4. Your arm might turn into a meat slicer as it takes you down on your face.
I was able to hold my phone in one hand for this shot, but I had to use both of them to keep the bottle from falling and crashing into the ground.
My arms were getting pretty tired after the third flip, so there was definite potential for my arm to get severed during any future flips. If you got water in your mouth, it could lead to all sorts of problems (wet clothes, wet skin).
5. You can’t do this trick in water.
In order for the bottle to flip up and down, the water inside must become more buoyant than the glass of water it’s holding (unless you’re using a clear plastic bottle filled with some sort of a liquid, but that defeats the purpose).
If your arm is wet, it might not have enough traction to hold onto the bottle, causing it to fall on its side or tip over. You would probably also slip and fall too!
6. Kehlani is part of the R&B group “The Clique”.
She is also part of the hip-hop and trap music duo “You Should Be Here”, which consists of herself and producer Stargate. The flip challenge appears to be a Chinese invention.
The first video I could find was by Han Han on April 9th, 2016, while the original video was posted April 12, 2016. It’s not clear how this is supposed to help with stress or sadness in any way.
7. The bottle doesn’t have to be a water bottle.
The white bottle was probably the easiest to flip. Of course, you could use a Coke or Pepsi bottle as well, but it will make the challenge harder.
8. The bottles don’t have to be white or blue or clear or green or red for the trick to work.
The second YouTuber that I watched mentioned that his friend tried this in orange soda and didn’t end up flipping it (it just ended up with the label coming off). The same thing went for the green and red striped bottle.
Thus, there’s no real reason to only to use a white or blue water bottle or one with a clear/green/red label. You could probably find any color of water bottle on the market that would work for this stunt.
