The water cup challenge has existed since at least 2021, though none have been as famous as the one undertaken by a NFL football player. Some losers had to jump into a swimming pool, while others were merely sprayed with a garden hose. Twitter commenters have started calling the challenge “water Jenga” in the quote retweets.

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While there are mechanical similarities, the water cup challenge isn’t actually Jenga like some netizens are calling it. It’s worse. When you play Jenga, there’s usually a shake that foretells the entire tower coming down. This isn’t the case for the water cup challenge, where overflow is entirely dependent on the surface tension of the water.

For those of you who slept through high school physics (me), surface tension is when water molecules clump more closely together on the sides without any other bits of H2O. As a result, every droplet of water added to the cup ends up holding strongly onto the main body. This means that nobody can tell who’s about to lose the challenge until it’s too late. For a better viewing experience, don’t look at how much time is remaining in the video.

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One guy eventually loses the water cup challenge at the end. I knew what the stakes were, but I didn’t actually think that he was going to be thrown into the pool. It was just a joke, right? Nope. To the man’s credit, he seemed cooperative as his friends led him to the edge of the water. Maybe next time, he’ll have the sweet satisfaction of pushing someone else in.