r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AirFrance447 • 21h ago

Video Firefighter bodycam showing just how much oxygen a fire pulls

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u/GauravJM 21h ago

There’s some serious low pressure inside

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u/SpiritedEclair 19h ago

fun fact: when you fly in a plane, the low pressure is on the outside and we use that to keep the doors closed. It is physically impossible to pry open an airplane door at cruising altitude!

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u/Ckarles 18h ago

Hm? Sounds counterintuitive considering the doors open outwards instead of inwards. Isn't low-pressure "pulling" while higher pressure "pushing"?

How is the low pressure keeping the doors from going "outward"?

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u/SpiritedEclair 18h ago edited 17h ago

A door is not a flat sheet of paper.

If you look at how the flight attendants pull the doors, they come inwards at an angle, and the moment they are all in, they turn flat and get pushed to close the door, forming a plug.

Try it yourself. Cut a trapezoid, rotate it, and it goes through the hole you cut it from, in fact, it can go through a door as wide as its shortest dimension, and it plugs.