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Swan neck flask

flask with a curved neck that traps particulate

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 28, 2025
Entity authorityQ11936221
Source-derived summary

A swan neck flask, also known as a gooseneck flask, is a round-bottom flask with a narrow s-shaped tube as its opening to reduce contact between the inner contents and external environment. The motion of air through the tube is slowed and aerosolized bacteria or other particles in the air tend to become trapped by moisture on the tube's inner surfaces. The contents of the flask thus remain free of microbes, a property showcased by French microbiologist Louis Pasteur in nineteenth century experiments used to support germ theory as the cause of fermentation over spontaneous generation from bad air (miasma).

Editorial summary

“Swan neck flask” enters the record as flask with a curved neck that traps particulate. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Swan, neck and flask can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 100-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Swan, neck and flask.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Swan neck flask” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Swan, neck and flask provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q11936221. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Swan neck flask”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Swan neck flask primary sources, Swan neck flask archive and Swan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Swan neck flask”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Swan neck flask” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.