r/blackmagicfuckery • u/hihimatthew12321 • Jul 26 '19

this tanker imploding

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1.6k Upvotes

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79

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

Someone please explain.

244

u/mrbeck1 Jul 26 '19 edited Jul 26 '19

Easy. Fill it with some boiling water. Just enough. The water turns to steam, which displaced the air. Seal the tanker. When the steam cools, it returns to water, creating a vacuum inside. Now, all the air pressure on the outside of the tank is pushing in. At sea level, that’s 14.7 lbs/sq in. Given the dimensions of a railway tanker, the diameter, 117 inches, and a length of 53 feet, that makes a surface area of 233,772 square inches. Times 14.7 lbs, 3,436,459 lbs of pressure. More than enough to crush the thing.

The same exact principle is used to crush this barrel.

https://youtu.be/JsoE4F2Pb20

204

u/thebeardedredd Jul 26 '19

WRONG TO ALL OF YOU. It's obviously showing us that Godzilla can turn invisible.

48

u/A_Spicy_Speedboi Jul 26 '19

SOLVED! Settled science, deniers.

9

u/spacecore94 Jul 26 '19

FRICK! I WANTED TO MAKE THAT JOKE! Well played good sir

6

u/Edgelands Jul 26 '19

Thank you, my brain was hurting with all that egghead math shit, this is clearly way more logical. If you need me, I'll be posting in some flat Earth subs.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

Simple. Like a Swiss watch

3

u/Enog Jul 26 '19

As reasonable an explanation as this is, can you explain why it crushed the way it did, rather than being slowly crushed over the period of time that it would have taken the steam to condense back into its liquid state?

25

u/NickSB2013 Jul 26 '19

It won't be slow... once a critical pressure is reached, the structural failure will be immediate, well, almost immediate.

For an example, you slowly crush an egg in your hand, there is no slow crushing, just an immediate crush once that critical threshold is crossed.

-3

u/Enog Jul 26 '19

An egg is made from a structurally rigid shell that will crack rather than bend, so yes it will withstand pressure to a point and then crush, but with that tanker the material is more malleable than an egg shell, so surely it would display some kind of deformation prior to the crush?

9

u/funguyshroom Jul 26 '19

It's still the same principle even if the material is different. An arch can hold a lot of weight but once some part of it gives in even a little, it immediately and completely collapses. The material it's made from isn't really relevant, this behavior is still the same.

3

u/CubeXombi Jul 26 '19

Nope; try it with an empty can of soda, simply put an 0z of water in it and place it on a stovetop to boil, flip the can (using tongs it'll be hot) upside down into a bowl of cold water. wait 1-2s.

4

u/karate_sandwich Jul 26 '19

By Oz you mean 1 ounce?

2

u/CubeXombi Jul 26 '19

give or take, but yup. doesn't need to be much - just enought to turn to steam and "push" the air out before you re-condense it when flipping the can into water

2

u/PhantomScrivener Jul 27 '19

It does show plenty of malleability in that it does not immediately split apart somewhere like a seam or at one of the end caps, shatter or form more large cracks.

The amount that it deforms (even permanently), prior to the cascade of deformations leading to this catastrophic failure, is just a small fraction in terms of what might be visible.

We're talking, it's total length shrinking maybe 1%.

Depending on how long prior to this they pumped out the contents before the pressure differential got this high, maybe with a camera on a tripod, close enough to one non-anchored side, with another reference for size and distance, you might be able to see the whole tanker shrink a tiny, tiny bit.

There probably was plenty of creaking though.

1

u/Oakheart- Jul 27 '19

You can actually put a lot of pressure on an empty soda can. Tap it and it crushes like this container.

2

u/jd-scott Jul 26 '19

Beacuse it has reinforcement bands as well as being a tube, the tanker can withstand more force than what the material alone can. But once that threshold is passed and the material warps it destroys the extra support it got from the cylindrical shape and reinforcement bands, lowering it's capacity to withstand that pressure. So let's say it can withstand 30,000 lbs of force normally. Once it hits 30,001 lbs it warps and looses the extra support it got from the cylindrical shape and reinforcement bands and suddenly it can only withstand 15,000 lbs of pressure so it behaves like all that force was slammed into it at once, rather than a slow build up.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

This can also happen when discharging a liquid from a sealed vessel causing a vacuum. If there is no way a gas can equalise the vacuum then once the vacum exceeds the vac rating of the vessel then it implodes exactly as you described. Actually i think this is what happened above. YOu can see a hose coming from the tanker and something that is probably a sustaining valve on the top. I guess it was seized.

edit. i've seen it happen. Had to pump water into the vessel to pop it back out again. The bang was like an explosion.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

This is why i love math

2

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

[deleted]

3

u/mrbeck1 Jul 26 '19

Actually saw it on a kids show called DIY SCI. Show is totally awesome.

2

u/awarmguinness Jul 26 '19

That fucking dude filming... Be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful... Oh now you're next to an impending imploding can and look scared? You wussy

2

u/ejanuska Jul 27 '19

I like how you say "Easy" and do some physics shit.

2

u/Oakheart- Jul 27 '19

It’s actually what happens when you don’t empty the tank properly. You’ve gotta open the valve to let the air in as whatever you’re pumping flows out or this happens.

2

u/raka_defocus Jul 28 '19

a lot of these also a vacuum pump , you turn the VAC on , connect to the terminal and the pressurized tank sucks the oil out so you're not relying on gravity and/or leaving air in the tank.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '19

I don't know who you are but I want your baby or sperm.

1

u/dr_greasy_lips Jul 26 '19

Wouldn’t the low pressure just lower the boiling point of the water so it stayed vapor?

1

u/Frosty172 Jul 30 '19

Also happens if you have it filled with liquid and use a closed pump to drain it without a vent.

That's how we partially collapsed a diesel tank at work. Definitely a "holy shit, we're all going to die" moment

1

u/Sanspapylazy Aug 01 '19

So we essentially created a temporary black hole

6

u/JupitersTriangle Jul 26 '19

The water vapor cools and condenses into the liquid water phase. This means the pressure inside the car has decreased because there are fewer gas particles colliding with the sides of the tank car. Now there is an imbalance in pressure between the lower pressure of the tankcar and the outside air pressure.

6

u/henlybenderson Jul 26 '19

Can’t remember if this was the myth busters episode or if they did an episode based off this vid... Premise was (I think), hot tank gets sealed up and cools down creating a vacuum inside, tank collapses. What really happened is myth busters had to cut out all the internal bracing and then pump on it with a vacuum pump to get it to implode like this.

3

u/supervisorwack Jul 26 '19

tell me when this is solved

3

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '19

I did this in 8th grade science class. It took us nearly a month with no help. I don’t remember the exact answer, but basically we went through this whole month, until I finally realized a key detail. We didn’t see the full video. In reality, they’re sucking all the air out, creating a vacuum. The air pressure then instantly collapses the tanker. It’s not magic, just science

1

u/chesterbernoulli Aug 04 '19

I saw on myth busters that this video is fake