Hey Answer Girl -

Why do employees at the Casper Events Center keep the caps when you buy bottles of water or soda during concerts and shows?

-Cap-less in Casper

It all started with a concussion.

Actually, it all started with several concussions, numerous bodily wounds, random broken instruments, and a steadily growing group of angry and/or scared musicians.

Those of us who stopped throwing random objects sometime during first grade may not understand the problem. But it turns out the Casper Events Center has a pretty good reason for keeping our caps during concerts.

Bud Dovala, building manager for the Events Center, said the caps are removed because flying bottles and the concert industry don't get along.

"Bottles with liquid in them are heavier than bottles without, and can be used as a projectile item," Dovala said. "It doesn't happen very often, but even here (in Casper) bottles are thrown, and when they are, it's very dangerous."

Dovala doesn't remember an exact incident that sparked the rule in Casper. But the concert industry has begun asking people everywhere - even in relatively small and seemingly calm towns - to remove the caps.

Paul Wertheimer, who works with Crowd Management Strategies, a Los Angeles-based security company specializing in large event management, said bottle throwing has become such an issue in the past decade that he'd like to ban bottles entirely from concert venues.

"Generally people aren't rowdy, but sometimes good people don't use common sense or they get carried away," Wertheimer said. "Caps are just part of the problem."

Wertheimer, who has seen crowds throw everything from the stuffed bears and flowers to sewer grates and animal intestines, cited concerts at music festivals like Woodstock '99 and Ozzfest where audience members pelted the less well-liked acts with anything they could find, including glass and plastic bottles.

"I would enforce the idea of no caps, but even if it loses some of the water along the way, I'm not in favor of plastic bottles at all at concert events or at any events where people have been known to throw them," Wertheimer said. "Fans do it on occasion, and they're known to hurt people seriously."

Wertheimer said the safest way to serve drinks at a live entertainment event is to serve them in plastic cups, but because cups would be an extra cost, many venues opt to keep caps instead.

"We don't do it to upset people, we do it because we're asked to for safety reasons," the Events Center's Dovala said. "It's unfortunate for the honest people, but it's the few people who throw things that cause problems for everybody else."

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Does removing the caps really make a difference? To find out, Answer Girl conducted a highly scientific experiment. To see the video, log on to www.trib.com.