The real reason why fizzy drink cans have that little hole revealed

Why do fizzy drink cans have that little hole in the ring pull?

You’ve probably never thought about it before, but you’re thinking about it now, aren‘t you?

After all, you don't actually need the little hole to open the can.

Is it a special hole for straws?

Is this what ring pull holes are for? (TikTok/@sheenamcrae25)

Ask a TikToker what the little hole is for and they’ll probably say it’s so you can swing the ring pull round and stick your straw in it so it doesn’t move around.

One TikToker posted a video with the caption: “This is how I put a straw in a soda can.”

Another posted a similar video with the cap: “The real reason why fizzy drink cans have that little hole revealed.”

Nice try, but I don’t think anyone really needs a slightly smaller, secondary hole to cradle their straw - despite several people clearly thinking this is some kind of game-changing hack.

Instead, the hole in the ring pull is actually a hangover from the way cans used to be designed back in the 1970s.

So, how did cans used to be designed?

Back in the day, the ring pull on fizzy drink cans used to completely detach.

You actually needed to stick your finger through the hole in the ring pull to get it off, like this:

The problem with this is that the discarded ring pulls became a health hazard, with people littering them all over the shop.

Some people stepped on them and slashed their feet, whilst other people swallowed them.

An article in The Journal of the American Medical Association noted that in three years, seven children had been treated for ‘complications of ingestion or aspiration of pull tabs from aluminium beverage cans’.

Something had to change, so along came Daniel F. Cudzik, who came up with the can ring pull design we have today, with the aim of reducing littering.

Cans weren't always like this (Getty Stock Image/Calvin Chan Wai Meng)

There is some complex physics explaining why this can is such a good idea - something about the ring pull operating as both a ‘second class’ and ‘first class lever’ - but as I can make neither head nor tail of it, I have zero chance of explaining it to you.

People were baffled after watching a YouTube video explaining what the hole in the ring pull is actually for.

One wrote: “It's good when big companies still want to keep some features as memories instead of changing them entirely.”

Another added: “One company's relic is another man’s straw holder.”

You’ll never look at a can of Coke the same again.