Chi Nguyen, an artist, has been stuck in a dilemma for days.
Nguyen tweeted Monday “Twitter! I need your help!” along with an image of one of the bowls. “I stacked one ceramic bowl in another while I was doing dishes, and they are stuck. How can you get the smaller bowl out of the larger one without breaking them both?
Nguyen did not respond to a request for comment but was immediately bombarded with advice. Her first tweet was retweeted over 20,000 times and quoted more than 10,000 times. It has been liked almost 140,000 times and received countless responses online. The internet has been captivated by her bowl story.
Nguyen then shared the many ways she tried to free the bowls from each other in subsequent tweets.
She also suggested using “warm soapy water,” “hot water on the outer bowl;”, “cold + ice on the inner bowl;”, “oil on edges;”, “microwave;”, “WD-40;” and “cards, toothpicks and straws”, but they weren’t breaking the seal.
Many people on Twitter responded with their own ideas. Lauren Hough, author of this article said that it seemed like the smaller bowl has become the larger. Nguyen was the beneficiary of her expensive solution.
Hough wrote, “Probably not useful in this economy.” Is there a mountain of decent size nearby? Go on a road trip. You might find that the altitude expands the air enough to allow for more.
Others sought guidance from the scientists.
Mark Rober, an engineer at NASA and Apple, suggested glue for separating the bowls.
“Hot glue handles to each one. Rober tweeted: “Then you can apply opposite jiggly pulling force?”
Hank Green, a YouTuber and science communicator, offered a controversial suggestion: “Pick which one you like most.”
Some people responded simply with jokes or shared their personal investment in this story.
One tweet said: “Folks, why are you so tired?” “Last night, I was up trying help a lady remove 2 stuck ceramic bowls on twitter.”
The bowl chaos seems to have only gotten worse. Nguyen tweeted several new ways to unstick bowls on Tuesday night.
