You’ve Been Pouring Juice Wrong Your Entire Life

When pouring orange juice from the carton, most people intuitively put the plastic spout as close to the glass as possible. This results in the infamous glugging approach, where your juice splatters within the glass and makes a “glug glug” noise. Not cool.

Well, I’m here to tell you that if this is your approach to pouring juice out of a carton — or really any liquid from a carton — you’ve been doing it wrong your entire life. There’s actually a better way that is splatter- and glug-free.

First and foremost, the right way to pour out of a carton is to hold the carton so the spout is on the top, further away from the rim of the drinking vessel. This results in a clean pour without any splatter or alarming noises, as showcased by YouTube personality Crazy Russian Hacker.

There’s a scientific reason why one approach is better than the other. According to Nerdist, the inside of a sealed carton has the same atmospheric pressure as the outside. But when you pour with the spout closer to the glass, it’s the weight of the liquid that pushes it out of the carton, leaving no room for air flow via the pouring hole.

As volume within the carton decreases, an air bubble within the carton forms and increases — this results in a decrease in pressure. The uneven pressure within the carton and outside of the carton results in the familiar “glug glug” sound, since outside air pushes some of the juice back in. But when you pour the “right way,” there’s a small hole in the spout that lets air flow in and out, letting the pressure remain neutral.

The video is about three years old, but the tip still baffles many who are in the dark. Most recently, it popped back up on Reddit when a user stumbled upon the pouring hack.