While visiting my parents for Christmas a couple of years ago, we finished a bottle of sparkling cider and I got wondering what kinds of experiments we could do with it. I had in the back of my mind the experiments where you drop a candle or match in a bottle then put an egg on top, but the bottle neck was too small. I got wondering what would happen if we filled the bottle with a little water, heated it until it was steaming, then placing it upside down in a bowl of water.
In theory, the water would seal the bottle air tight, and as the steam cooled, it would suck the water up inside. I wondered how much water it would pull in. I heated it on the stove, used oven mitts to transfer it, but when I placed it in the bowl I wasn't prepared for what happened. The water shot up inside the bottle with tremendous force, and nearly all the water was sucked out of the bowl. That was far more than I was expecting, very dramatic, and the perfect makings of a new experiment to try at home. As a follow up, I don't recommend heating glass bottles on the stove. They crack when they go in the water due to thermal shock. But if you heat them in the microwave for just 1:30 or less, there should be no problem with cracking. But they do get hot, so be careful :)