I've never heard of a Pop-Pop Boat before, so it's really not any weirder than I thought it was because I'd never thought of it at all.
Turns out the science of a pop-pop boat isn't all that different from the drinking bird. There's a contained amount of gas that is warmer than another amount of gas. That warmness causes the gas to expand and pushes liquid blocking that gas. In the case of the drinking bird, that unbalances the bird and makes it tip over. In the case of the pop-pop boat that liquid pushes the boat forward in a halting way.
Steve Mould's see-through model of the pop-pop boat doesn't, sadly, make the same pop-pop sound because there's no metal to snap back and forth, but it is a great way to see the inner workings of the boat.
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