No prob. I guess you could play with hole size, and edge sharpness, just for experimentation. Also, was there a lot of dish soap making foam, or just a little?
Anyway, I repeated your experiment with a cylindrical teapot strainer my SO has in the kitchen. It's stainless steel, about 6-7cm or so diameter, holes on bottom and sides, and holes look like about .7mm (but it's hard to judge scale with things I have around the house, I had to use a penny). It behaved not like you described, but more like what I'd expect. When first placed in cold tapwater, it floated. A gentle push made it sink. Then once it had been wetted, it was no longer able to float.
So it seems that with stainless, whatever size these holes are, is just on the edge. I can imagine a different material thickness, and a more hydrophobic material, and smaller holes if that's the case, would give quite a bit more resistance to water
For making tea, surface tension falls vs temperature, but not dramatically. About 20% less from room temp to boiling.
@AndrewJackson (flagging so you get notified, hopefully - still not sure how these chats work)
Thank you very much for your efforts - I never knew that I could encounter such passion for solving problems by just chatting to someone over the internet!
The dish soap did produce foam bubbles and I observed them inside the construction as well, so that may have played some role. Strangely, the water seemed to exit the strainer quicker when I picked it up.
It would appear that I have little choice but to continue blind…
The thickness is 0.5 cm, exactly as big as the hole size.
Discussion between Andrew Jackson and…
Discussion between Andrew Jackson and…