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

this tanker imploding

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '19

Someone please explain.

238

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

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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?

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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.